Speaker
Description
Long-term monitoring of air pollutants is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of emission-reduction measures and to support compliance with the European Union (EU) Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD). In the Lazio region, including the metropolitan area of Rome, multiple studies provide complementary insights into trends of atmospheric pollution using satellite and ground-based remote sensing products.
Analysis of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) over the Lazio region shows a ~19 % decrease over the last 20 years, reflecting long-term improvement in particulate pollution (Terenzi et al., 2025). As AOD alone cannot fully represent local anthropogenic pollution, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) vertical column density from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) provides complementary information, enabling attribution to sources such as traffic and domestic heating (Bassani et al., 2023; 2021). Further analyses combining TROPOMI NO₂, formaldehyde (HCHO), and carbon monoxide (CO) with AOD helped identify persistent pollution hotspots, including in rural regions. Regarding climate, TROPOMI regional methane (CH₄) observations indicate a ~4 % increase in recent years, highlighting emerging air-quality and climate challenges. Complementing these regional-scale observations, the ground-based SkySpec spectrometer allowed identification of the spatial and temporal distribution of NO₂ and nitrous acid (HONO) within ~7 km radius areas.
These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating satellite and ground-based remote sensing products for a comprehensive understanding of temporal and spatial trends in air pollution, supporting identification of emission sources, evaluation of mitigation strategies, and verification of implemented measures.
