Spaceborne Remote Senising Based Climatologies: SO2, NO2, Aerosol & Desert Dust

Abstract

Turkey is located amidst a highly complicated geographical zone since the country constitutes a bridge between European and Asian main land next to African continent. As a result of intercontinental transition, the biggest part of the country, Anatolian Peninsula spreads over Eastern Mediterranean Basin and Middle East, which are the most affected regions global climate change in mid-latitude zone. Moreover, surrounding countries and regions have their own distinctive terrain, flora and fauna besides societal, industrial and administrative characteristics. As well as local contributions of deforested/natural arid regions, mega/medium cities, fossil fueled power plants, and highly industrialized areas, this unique crossroad region is under the effect of medium and long-range transport of both biogenic and anthropogenic pollutants. In addition to all these factors Anatolian peninsula is nearly located admits of dusty belt and surrounded by two of the largest desert areas in the World (North Africa and Middle East). According to mid-latitude westerly and local wind patterns, Middle East and North African deserts originated mineral aerosol namely dust advections form up an extra load on air quality and relatedly on public health. Within the framework of international amendments and associated national legislation, Turkey has obligations to comply with in terms of environmental and air quality limitations. This situation forms up a need for climatology and emission inventory studies. Air quality and climatology studies have begun to gain momentum in a different direction in the last 50 years by considering the trace gas and aerosol observations from remote sensing platforms. Obtaining the required measurements at each single point is time consuming, costly and leads to uncertainties. For this reason, with using the power of spaceborne remote sensing, it is aimed to develop SO 2 , NO 2 and desert dust climatology have for Turkey. 13-year trace gas climatology part has revealed that there are some certain hot spots and statistically significant trends detectable in Turkey wide, in regional and worldwide. Apart from the developing countries, Turkey has NO 2 and 1 km SO 2 emission values below the world averages (0.721 and 151.085 SO 2 × 10 15 mol/cm 2 ). But statistically significant increasing trends show that, in the upcoming years Turkey will put its emission values above the world averages. Besides annual averages, in colder months emissions are increasing with the natural stagnant weather conditions. Also, elevated layers such as 2.5 km and 6 km are affecting from the abundancy change in NO 2 and SO 2 emissions significantly. 9-year desert dust climatology part has revealed that dust abundancy is increasing in direction of west to east in Eastern Mediterranean Basin. May, June and July months are the most active period as the whole sub-domains have the highest dust elevations, incidences and mass loads. Eastern part of Turkey is a natural barrier which disables dust particles to reach Caucasus region and also enables air quality degradation in south eastern part of the country with ridge downwelling katabatic effect. Besides Lodos is more effective in Aegean part, Mediterranean Sea is a good barrier which acts as a tampon between Anatolia and Sahara. Contrary to this, direct continental contact with Middle East part makes Eastern part of the country more exposed to particulate matter pollution.