BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Europe’s pollution hotspots shown
Dutch scientists are putting together remarkable maps showing pollution over Europe and other regions of the globe.Using the US space agency’s Aura satellite, the team can look right down to the troposphere, the lowest part of the atmosphere where we all live.

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (Omi) and other key equipment on Aura can build a daily picture of air quality. The pollution maps, which can see detail at the city scale, will be used to identify problem hotspots.

‘This is the first time that we have been able to follow pollution globally from day to day,’ said Pieternel Levelt, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who is Omi’s principal investigator. ‘This will help us understand how pollution is formed and where it comes from, its sources; and where it goes to, its sinks.

Very cool.