NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have released a COVID-19 Earth Observation (EO) dashboard to track the environmental and socio-economic impact of the Coronavirus. Canada is not directly involved.
The dashboard integrates multiple satellite data records from the three space agencies with analytical tools that allows the public “to track changes in air and water quality, climate change, economic activity and agriculture.”
The data is collected from the following satellites; NASA’s Aura and OCO-2, the US Suomi NPP, a joint NASA/NOAA/DoD mission, JAXA’s GOSAT and ALOS-2, and Europe’s Sentinel satellites.
NASA describes the new resource as follows. “This tri-agency data resource gives the public and policymakers a unique tool to probe the short-term and long-term impacts of pandemic-related restrictions implemented around the world. The dashboard will continue to grow with new observations added over the coming months as the global economy gradually reopens.”
COVID-19 Earth Observation Dashboard Tutorial
The dashboard came about when in April NASA suggested the three space agencies form a task force to tackle the challenge. According to NASA, “the group identified the most relevant satellite data streams and adapted existing computing infrastructure to share data from across the agencies and produce relevant indicators. The dashboard presents users with seamless access to data indicating changes in air and water quality, economic and agricultural activity on a global scale and in select areas of interest.”
“Air quality changes around the world were among the first noticeable impacts of pandemic-related stay-at-home orders and reductions in industrial activity that emerged from satellite observations. One air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels for transportation and electricity generation, shows up clearly in satellite data. NO2 has a lifetime of a few hours and is a precursor of ground-level ozone, which makes it a useful indicator of short-term air quality changes. The dashboard brings together current NO2 data from two NASA and ESA satellites, along with historical data for comparison. In additional to the global view of NO2, targeted regional areas include Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, and Madrid.”
Announcing the tri-agency dashboard
On June 25 Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and other agency representatives announced the new initiative and unveiled the dashboard. A replay is available below.
Where’s Canada in all of this?
SpaceQ contacted the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to inquire why Canada wasn’t involved in this endeavour.
While we did receive a reply, the question as to why Canada was not involved was not answered.
This is what the CSA said, “there are Canadian datasets that are part of our partner-mission portals. For example, Canadian atmospheric and climate data is available through NASA’s EO Data Portal (MOPITT instrument on Terra) and ESA Third Party Mission portals (OSIRIS instrument on Odin and SCISAT). This available Canadian data may help inform our partners’ activities.”
While that data is available to partners, it was not included by the tri-agency partnership in their dashboard as it wasn’t considered relevant enough.
The CSA did point out that they participate in the NASA’s Space App COVID-19 challenge saying “participants from all around the world were invited to use satellite data, including Canadian data, to develop solutions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges ranged from the study of the coronavirus and its spread to the impact of the disease on the Earth system.”
While that is commendable, it has nothing to do with the COVID-19 dashboard initiative.
Other than the instruments mentioned by the CSA, Canada’s EO satellites include the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (3 satellites), the aging RADARSAT-2 and SCISAT satellites.
For a country that relies heavily on EO data, Canada has developed few EO satellites of its own. Currently, the only new EO satellite in early development is the WildFireSat.