The NASA Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA): Providing Actionable Air Quality Data in Europe and Around the Globe

The Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) project is a NASA project focused on improving our understanding of the associations between speciated particulate matter (PM) air pollution and human health. The MAIA satellite instrument is currently being built at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and NASA and JPL will identify a host satellite, with launch currently expected circa 2024 for a three-year baseline mission. The instrument will collect data on aerosol optical properties over a set of globally distributed target areas, which will be used in a geostatistical regression model, in combination with surface monitor data and chemical transport modeling, to derive surface-level PM concentrations. Epidemiologists on the MAIA Science Team will conduct studies in the eleven planned Primary Target Areas (PTAs) using the MAIA products to associate PM with various health outcomes. Observations are also planned in Secondary Target Areas (STAs) to provide data of interest to the community.

MAIA has a strong presence in Europe with two PTAs (Barcelona and Rome) and one STA, Belgrade, planned in the region. In the PTAs, the MAIA project will be providing data products including per-observation aerosol property data and per-observation and daily surface-level PM data (including total PM10 and PM2.5, and sulfate, nitrate, organic carbon, elemental carbon, and dust PM2.5). The project’s capacity to process the full suite of data products in any given STA is dependent on the associated observational objectives and availability of resources. MAIA data will be available free of charge from the NASA Atmospheric Science Data Center. This presentation will cover details of the MAIA target areas in Europe, prospective health studies, potential synergies with Sentinel-4 data, and how potential users can receive resources including MAIA simulated data.