Two NASA research aircraft were launched Feb 15 on flights from the Philippines to South Korea, during which air quality observations were conducted in airspace over central, southern and eastern Taiwan for four hours, providing precise high-resolution data. This is the first large international and cross-department cooperative monitoring exercise by the Ministry of Environment.
In addition, the MOENV, together with 15 inter-ministerial committees, 20 academic research units and over 40 international and domestic academics, launched 3D air monitoring on February 1 in the Kaohsiung-Pingtung region to analyze correlations between terrain, atmospheric circulation and air pollutants, in a joint international observation of changes in distribution of air particles.
The MOENV stated that the Kaohsiung-Pingtung air quality monitoring project has two NASA-Taiwan joint advanced ground-based air monitoring stations, and a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) vertical spectrometer station. The project also includes data from ground-level air quality stations run by various domestic bodies, using instruments including drones, wind radars and solar photometers, which simultaneously monitor the physical characteristics, chemical composition, and 3D distribution of various air pollutants.
The MOENV looks forward to working further on large-scale international experiments in cooperation with NASA, sharing high-resolution air pollution observational data, and working with the ongoing Kaohsiung-Pingtung 3D air quality project to explore and analyze the causes and distribution of air pollutants in the country’s south. It anticipates that these will assist in formulating more sophisticated air pollution control strategies and act as a model for international scientific research, policy formulation and cooperation. (POC-E)
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from Taiwan Today – Top News