Minister Dijksma: ‘Satellites crucial in understanding climate system’

'We need to boost our knowledge and understanding of the climate system. For that, we need experts like you. If you show us what needs to be done, we'll do our best to make it happen.’ Sharon Dijksma, Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment poses a clear question to the space community on the fourth day of the European Space Solutions Conference in The Hague. The focus was on grand challenges in climate change and the environment.

Dijksma continued: ‘We want to get a better grip on what we should focus on, which regions are the most vulnerable and what measures have the most effect. We largely depend on data that can only be gathered by satellites. So it's good that more and better data are becoming available all the time.’

When it comes down to air quality, in the coming years all eyes will be on the Dutch satellite instrument Tropomi. Tropomi is the only instrument on board the Sentinel 5p satellite, one of the satellites of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus. The instrument measures air quality world on a daily basis world wide, with details as fine as a city block.

Tropomi data leads to new applications, like a smartphone app that predicts local air quality. The data also is of great value to governmentes all over the world, said Pieternel Levelt of the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI: ‘A lot of satellite data is already available and we are gathering more and better data in the time to come. I hope to convince everyone that we can use these data to improve the air quality.’

European Space Solutions Conference: http://european-space-solutions.eu/

Tropomi: http://www.tropomi.nl/