Improving Zimbabwe’s capacity for air quality monitoring from the ground and by TROPOMI

Zimbabwe is one of the African countries severely affected by high air pollution levels with significant impacts on human health and the environment. To develop mitigation strategies and sustainable policies, monitoring of air quality (AQ) is essential. However, Zimbabwe has few air quality monitoring stations, and these are concentrated in the densely populated industrial area of Harare. This results in significant data gaps, limited assessment of air quality, ineffective health and environmental policies. We present the progress made within the “AQ4Zim” project, funded by ESA within the EOAFRICA framework, of which the objectives are: 1) expand the AQ monitoring network through installation of low-cost sensors; 2) explore the spatial and temporal variations in Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) patterns across Zimbabwe using TROPOMI on the Sentinel-5p platform; and 3) develop and evaluate a smoke-dust discriminator for TROPOMI. The satellite data will be compared with ground-based data from the low-cost sensors as they become available. Relating satellite measurements to the measurements at ground level, ensures that they can be used to routinely monitor air quality efficiently. The data will form a basis for the calculation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target indicators 11.6.2 and 3.9.1.