Summary

A recent report from the African Union Commission, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, and the UN Environment Programme proposes a set of recommendations and identifies measures to reduce emissions causing air pollution and climate change, which would set the continent on a cleaner development pathway towards meeting the goals of the African Union Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want. 

The report notably recommends the establishment of a continent wide Africa Clean Air Program, which would, among other aspects, “help collect and share data, utilise existing data and information sources, and increase capacity and equipment for new data collection and management, with monitoring and evaluation, emissions and air quality modelling, and education and communication”

EUMETSAT has been providing observations from the Meteosat and Metop satellites since the end of the 1990s. The products provided by Meteosat and Metop can support the air quality monitoring capacities in developing countries, where reliable in-situ observatories are limited, and who are highly vulnerable to air quality and climate change. The atmospheric composition data provided by EUMETSAT’s satellites support air quality monitoring. In addition, the satellites observe phenomena affecting health and security, such as desert dust storms and wildfire emissions. The provision of data is set to continue for the next two decades thanks to next-generation missions such as Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and the EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS-SG), as well as the Copernicus instruments Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 carried on them, which are dedicated to air quality in Europe and globally.

Link to the Agenda and the Presentations: https://www.eumetsat.int/webinar-air-quality-monitoring-africa