MOPGA/Improving Air Quality in West Africa: Low-cost sensors as a solution to improve the understanding of spatial and temporal variability in urban air pollution
- 1Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers - EFLUVE UMS CNRS 3653, Université Paris-Est Créteil, Créteil, France (julien.bahino@lisa.ipsl.fr)
- 2Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA/IPSL) UMR CNRS 7583, Université Paris-Est Créteil et Université Paris, Créteil, France
- 3Laboratoire des Sciences de la Matière de l'Environnement et de l'Energie Solaire (LASMES) UFR SSMT, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny d'Abidjan, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire
- 4Laboratoire d’Aérologie de Toulouse OMP UMR 5560, Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
- 5Public Health Research Group - Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
- 6Department of Physics, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
This study was carried out within the framework of the Improving Air Quality in West Africa (IAQWA) project funded by the Make Our Planet Great Again (MOPGA) program. In recent years, West African countries have experienced an economic upturn driven by GDP growth of nearly 3.7% in 2019 (AfDB, 2020). This economic boom is mainly felt in the cities where it promotes the construction of highway infrastructure, real estate development, and industry. All these activities are sources of air pollution. Unfortunately, there is almost no air quality monitoring in these cities partly due to the high cost of monitoring instruments. Low-cost air quality monitoring instruments can help improve the spatial and temporal resolution of measurements at relatively lower cost. However, the installation of these instruments in West African environments characterized by high relative humidity requires their calibration through collocation with reference instruments. The IAQWA project aims to improve our understanding of air pollutants such as fine particulate matter mass (PM2.5), ozone (O3), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) in Abidjan and Accra, two major West African capitals, through the deployment of Real-time Affordable Multi-Pollutant (RAMP) monitors.
Since February 2020, five RAMPs have been installed and are operating continuously at various sites in Abidjan and Lamto in Cote d'Ivoire, and four RAMPs have been operating in Accra, Ghana. Some of the RAMPs have been collocated with PM and/or NOx reference instruments. At other sites the RAMPs have been collocated with INDAAF passive samplers and passive aerosol collectors. These collocations have allowed for the development of calibration models for these low-cost sensors. The performance of these calibration models is presented here along with the diurnal and seasonal variations of air pollution at the different sites in Abidjan and Accra. These results will eventually be used to improve our understanding of the drivers of air pollution in these major West African cities, which is essential to choosing sustainable development pathways in the future.
How to cite: Bahino, J., Giordano, M., Yoboué, V., Ochou, A., Galy-Lacaux, C., Liousse, C., Amegah, K., Hugues, A., Nimo, J., Beekmann, M., and Subramanian, R.: MOPGA/Improving Air Quality in West Africa: Low-cost sensors as a solution to improve the understanding of spatial and temporal variability in urban air pollution, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8210, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8210, 2021.
