Enhanced situational awareness in Finland using atmospheric (and other) space-based observations

New remote sensing satellites for Earth Observation provide information to enhance situational awareness during exceptional socio-economic and natural events. Specifically, satellite-based observations of air pollutants, when combined with auxiliary (spaceborne and not) data, can provide new insights on societal and economic changes taking place around the world. Here we present a few applications of space-based atmospheric observations to support Finnish authorities. A recent history of such episodes includes: monitoring air quality changes in Helsinki during the COVID-19 pandemic; assessing methane emissions from the NordStream pipeline leakage over the Baltic Sea; assessing the environmental and social effects of the war in Ukraine as part of Finnish international cooperation projects. We integrate multiple data sources acquired by different spaceborne sensors including, e.g., the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) retrievals from the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor/TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument), Sentinel-2 false color imagery, NASA VIIRS fire products as well as models and other environmental data.