A New Era of Air Quality Monitoring from Space over North America with TEMPO: Early Years in Orbit

We present a status overview of the TEMPO mission including its operation, validation and status of baseline data products and upcoming algorithm improvements, implementation of Near-Real-Time (NRT) and other data products.

TEMPO is NASA’s first Earth Venture Instrument (EVI) selected in 2012, and the North America component of the geostationary air quality constellation along with GEMS (launched in Feb. 2020) over Asia and Sentinel-4 (to launch in 2025) over Europe. It is the first spaceborne instrument providing revolutionary hourly daytime air pollution over North America from Mexico City to the Canadian oil sands, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at neighborhood scale (~10 km² at boresight). It uses UV/visible spectroscopy (293-493 nm, 538-741 nm) to measure key elements of tropospheric air pollution chemistry including O₃, NO₂, HCHO and aerosols, and capture the inherent high variability in the diurnal cycle of emissions and chemistry. TEMPO was successfully launched on board IS-40E into the geostationary orbit at 91°W in April 2023. It conducted its first light Earth observations in early August 2023, kicking off a new era of air quality monitoring from space over North America. It started its nominal operation in October 2023 for a 20-month of baseline Phase E. The baseline mission has been recently extended to September 2026, with further extension via NASA senior reviews. At night, TEMPO can observe city lights, gas flaring, maritime lights from fishing and offshore oil platforms, clouds and snow in the moonlight, lightning, aurorae, and nightglow without interfering with its primary daytime air quality/chemistry mission. Baseline V3 data products were released to the public in May 2024 from NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC). These data products were upgraded from beta to provisional level in December 2024 after the validation team approval. TEMPO near-real-time (NRT) and other science quality data products were funded by NASA Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) to assist in air quality forecasting and modeling efforts and develop better pollution control strategies.