Transcontinental pollution
Aerosols may have a greater impact on patterns of overall rainfall and future climate change than previously thought. In example, the extensive pollution haze emanating from Asia may be re-shaping rainfall patterns in northern Australia. Recent climate modelling shows that there may be important effects on southern hemisphere climate due to aerosol pollution from the Northern Hemisphere. These include an increase of rainfall certain areas, and an increase of air pressure over others, which may have contributed to less rainfall there. EZ Lidar can measure and detect different aerosol layers and through the backscattering trajectories it is possible to identify the original pollution source causing major climate changes.
Regional and Urban Pollution
What's the contribution of the regional pollution to the concentrations of particulate matter recorded locally? Regional-to-local transfer of pollutants is indeed a growing concern expressed by air quality managers. Monitoring the vertical structure of the urban and regional atmosphere, while identifying the primary nature of aerosols (anthropogenic from mineral dust for example) brings an innovative contribution to the challenge that is supported by the EZ Lidar ALS300 and its ability to monitor continuously the evolution of the mixing layer above, as well as to discriminate the rough shape of the particles.
Indoor air quality
Bigger strongly urbanized cities in the world are often exposed to atmospheric pollution events. Both the train and the subway are basic components of public transportation in order to limit the pollution and the greenhouse emission. Hence, the limitation of aerosol pollution in public indoor areas is of crucial importance. EZ Lidar performed measurements in underground station to test the potential interest of active remote sensing to follow the spatiotemporal evolution of aerosol content inside a confined microenvironment.
Industrial pollution
Monitoring emissions of atmospheric pollutants now comes up as a pressing duty on industrial and public environnmental managers. The newest EZ
Lidar™ feature, "Aerosol Plume Tracker", detects through horizontal scans the temporal evolution of
emitted plumes. Some measurement tests were performed in the Champs
Elysées (Paris), an area with an intense traffic. Short time horizontal
and vertical scans put in evidence variable dispersion patterns of car exhausts depending
on traffic lights. Other two measurement campaigns took place in
Dunkerque, France and in Port Headland, Australia. The first one
detected the evolution of the plumes over a highly industrialized area.
High frequency temporal scans show spatial evolution and intensity of
the plumes. In the second one, the scans reconstructed the 3-D plumes
evolution thanks to the fast speed velocity with a spatial resolution
of 1.5 m.