Save the date! The next Sentinel-3 Validation Team (S3VT) workshop will be held at EUMETSAT, in Darmstadt, Germany, from the 10th to the 12th of March, 2020! This is an important meeting, jointly chaired by EUMETSAT and ESA, for all scientists & users engaged with validation and evolution recommendations of current & upcoming products from the CopernicusSentinel-3 mission. And it will be my pleasure to co-chair our 2nd S3VT Atmosphere session.
Anyone who wishes to be involved in the Sentinel-3 validation activities with a privileged access to early new information is very encouraged to submit a proposal to join the S3VT team here. Looking forward to fruitful exchanges on aerosols,fire, H2O, andclouds!
Our research works achieved with my colleagues from Geoscience & Remote Sensing (GRS) – TU Delft, and KNMI, before my leaving, will be presented via a poster at EGU 2018. In particular, recent findings and the last publication on the retrieval of aerosol layer height (ALH) from the OMI 477 nm O2-O2 band and using the developed neural network algorithm will be shown
Don’t miss the poster presentation by Prof. Dr. Pieternel Levelt on Monday 09.04 17:30 – 19:00 in Hall X5 at board number X5.170!
Recent results of OMI Aerosol Layer Height Retrieval over East China by Chimot et al. (2018) (just accepted for publication in AMT).
More information?
Abstract EGU2018 “Aerosol layer height from OMI and neural network – Evaluation and possibility of a 13-year time series?” here
The 20th OMI Science Team Meeting will be held at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt MD, USA from Tuesday September 12 through Thursday September 14, 2017. With nearly 14 years of data and the impending launch of TROPOMI on board-Sentinel-5 Precursor, there is much to discuss within the OMI (& TROPOMI) team and user community regarding the current state of OMI, trends and longer-terms records, comparisons with (satellite) data sets, and the validation of OMI data. This meeting will highlight recent OMI results as well as address research plans and program goals for the coming year.
exposing at the TU Delft research exhibition 2017!
On 06-08 June 2017, was held the largest scientific exposition of the Netherlands in Delft by the technological university (see video summary). These 3 days of TU Delft research exhibition was a nice opportunity to meet diverse visitors from business, government institutions, students and any public / citizen interested in technology innovation and the latest developments about air quality activities. Just to name a few: the European parliament, 3M, KPN, Innovation Quarter, Delft Data Science, the mayor of Delft, Airbus, TNO, ERASMUS Rotterdam, students from national and international technical universities etc… The TU Delft research exhibition 2017 also celebrated the 175th birthday of the university!
With more than 1800 visitors from more than 400 different companies, the global event was successful.
A very nice opportunity organised by the TU Delft Valorisation centre and the Dig-IT! project. It was a pleasure to share our motivations about satellite observations, the NO2 trends already observable over the 13 years of OMI mission (and emphasized by Barak Obama in 2016), our recent development on aerosol height measurements, the future TROPOMI within the ESA COPERNICUS programme, our very exciting international collaborations in particular with China and our vision of the next developments & partnership in Delft.
And as a follow up, our research exhibition continued during the week-end of 10-11 June 2017 at the theatre de Veste in Delft.
TU Delft research exhibition 2017…
continued at the Theatre de Veste in Delft…
with our satellite air quality activities.
We are very grateful to all the organizers (in particular the DIG-it! project & the TU Delft valorisation centre), and the visitors who stopped by our stand for listening and asking stimulating questions! I am afraid words cannot serve justice for all the huge organisation work made for this event. Many great thanks therefore to all of you!
We are looking forward to reading or hearing from your feedback and to seeing you again at a next exhibition opportunity!
Save the dates! On 6, 7 and 8 June 2017, the largest scientific exposition of the Netherlands will take place at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Among the 175 selected projects, our current research project (OMI, tropospheric NO2 and aerosols, and the future with TROPOMI) will be exhibited there (see here), and I will be present with my colleagues for welcoming the visitors.
Everyone from business (06th), government (07th) and public (08th) is invited to come and visit this year edition combined with the celebration of TU Delft’s 175th anniversary in 2017.
The TU Delft Research Exhibition showcases the latest state-of-the-art of our innovative ideas that could be of interest to your business:
175 visual & interactive research presentations, across 11 different themes
Excursions to research facilities
More than 20 inspiring Speed Lectures
This is your chance to get a taste of our cutting edge technology and meet our brilliant minds! During the TU Delft Research Exhibition the International Festival of Technology takes place at the campus. So even more reason to come!
Access to the exhibition is possible after registration and free of charge. Hope to see you there!
Almost 1 week after the 3rd NASA A-Trains symposium in Pasadena (California, USA), was held the 2017 version of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) general assembly in Vienna, Austria. Several thousand scientists, from all over the world, working on multiple topics related to the climate system and its numerous components, were gathered there.
Several of our colleagues of the Geoscience & Remote sensing (GRS) / TU Delft research department gave talks on multiple topics such as rain observations, ice sheet melting monitoring & modelling, clouds, fine-scale atmospheric model. Though the GRS – TU Delft Twitter account, you can see pictures of the talks given by assistant professors and PhDs.
Furthermore, this was also a great opportunity for our specific group to promote our aerosol and trace gas satellite activities. Dr Pieternel Levelt, PI of OMI, part-time professor at TU-Delft & head of the satellite climate observations department at KNMI, attended the EGU 2017 conference to promote our recent works. In particular, she showed the 1-year development of the OMI aerosol layer height neural network algorithm based on the O2-O2 visible measurements (Chimot et al., 2017), and its recent evaluation over specific case studies of urban and biomass burning events by comparison with CALIOP measurements.
Chimot et al., 2017: Chimot, J., Veefkind, J. P., Vlemmix, T., de Haan, J. F., Amiridis, V., Proestakis, E., Marinou, E., and Levelt, P. F.: An exploratory study on the aerosol height retrieval from OMI measurements of the 477 nm O2 − O2 spectral band using a neural network approach, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 783-809, doi:10.5194/amt-10-783-2017, 2017 here
Poster at EGU 2017: Chimot J., Veefkind P., Vlemmix T., Levelt P., Aerosol layer height retrieval from satellite visible measurements – Application to OMI 477 nm O2-O2 spectral band, based on neural networks, EGU 2017, Vienna, Austria, 2017.04.26 here
Front slide of my given talk at the 3rd NASA A-Train symposium, Pasadena (California, USA), 2017.04.20.
Following the past symposia in Lille, France in 2007 and in New Orleans in 2010, the 3rd NASA A-Train symposium was held on 19-21 April in Pasadena (California, USA). The NASA A-Train is a unique afternoon constellation including a high value series of instruments (Aqua (2002), Aura (2004), PARASOL (2004), CALIPSO (2006), CloudSat (2006), GCOM-W1 (2012) and OCO-2 (2014)) observing our atmosphere.
I was honoured to give a talk, on Thursday 20 April on our recently achieved developments related to the OMI aerosol layer height neural network development (Chimot et al., 2017) and its applications to urban pollution and biomass burning events. Many exchanges allow me to think further about 1) the difficulties, even for LIDAR space-borne sensors, to entirely probe smoke aerosol layers, 2) the possibility to inter-compare OMI and OCO-2 aerosol layer height products in the future.
A lot of talks and posters were focused on their contributions to our aerosol and cloud cycle knowledge, and the forthcoming new generation of satellite instruments such as 3MI on MetOp-SG and the new LIDAR EarthCare. Discussions were also held on the recently launched Chinese mission TANSAT, devoted to CO2 observation, which plans to join the constellation soon. With the American mission OCO-2, there will be 2 satellite missions focusing on the atmospheric carbon cycle!
Finally, it is worth noting the very interesting & inspiring discussion led by Dr. Bruce Wieliecki on the economic value of climate science. Obviously, this is a burning and still very open topic. And it is hard to reach a consensus in our community. But if we want to convince the society with business key words, the (huge!) return of investment of a new climate observing system should then be more quantitatively emphasized to initiate concrete actions.
Great thanks to all the organizers of this symposium (in particular to Liz Juvera) and to all the instrument PIs of the A-Train constellation!
The entrance of the Pasadena convention centre, with the banner of the symposium.Pasadena (California, USA) city-hallMy badge at the 3rd NASA A-Train symposium
Talk at the 3rd NASA A-Train symposium: Chimot J., Veefkind P., Vlemmix T., de Haan J., Levelt P., Aerosol layer height retrieval from OMI+MODIS – A neural network approach, 3rd NASA A-Train symposium, Pasadena, California, USA, 2017.04.20 (Talk) here
Chimot et al., 2017: Chimot, J., Veefkind, J. P., Vlemmix, T., de Haan, J. F., Amiridis, V., Proestakis, E., Marinou, E., and Levelt, P. F.: An exploratory study on the aerosol height retrieval from OMI measurements of the 477 nm O2 − O2 spectral band using a neural network approach, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 783-809, doi:10.5194/amt-10-783-2017, 2017 here
Our recent developed aerosol layer height retrieval algorithm, based on a neural network approach and applied to the OMI O2-O2 visible measurements will be presented in the next weeks during 2 major conferences:
The community of atmospheric satellite observations is facing more and more challenges due to the non-stop increasing number of observations. The OMI air quality space-borne has already delivered ~542 million spectra per year since 2004. And its successor TROPOMI (to be launched later this year) is expected to increase this number by a factor of 20.
The most conventional atmospheric retrieval methods try to compete between high accuracy for each single observation and fast processing time. But usually, there is always a cost somewhere.
I could address my specific and subjective thoughts about this subject during the Second Post-gradual Teaching Workshop of the Buys Ballot Research School, at KNMI, on 2017.03.24.
I specifically thank Dr. Sybren Drijfhou for the invitation & the organisation, Dr. Tim Vlemmix, Dr. Pieternel Levelt, Dr. Pepijn Veefkind and all my GRS & KNMI colleagues for the diverse and inspiring discussions the last months. They motivated this talk. And finally, I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Maarten Sneep, Dr. Jacob van Peet (KNMI), Dr. Folkert Boersma (KNMI / WU) and Dr. Antonio di Noia (SRON) for their valuable inputs to my survey (cf. Survey Variational vs. statistical approaches to atmospheric parameter retrieval).
Debate: Is a university still independant if the industry funds research?
Do we still trust science?
On Tuesday 14 March, we had our annual GSE/GRS Research Day in Delft. The main topic of this special day was “Is science only an opinion”.
A lot of passionate debates were held about the place of science today in society, the trust of citizens in science and their researchers while scepticism increases regarding political institutions and media, the independence with industry and governments, the necessity to publish (“or perish”), our communication with media, how to engage in large scale debates while we are “only” experts in a sub(-sub-)-domain etc…
Personally, these debates had a special taste, 1.5 month after opening this web-page Twitter (and my motivations), but also 1 day after AMS sent their letter to Mr. Scott Pruitt, new Administrator of the US EPA agency, who stated his “disagreement” about the nature and role of atmospheric CO2 in the increased temperatures over recent decades. In spite of all the hard evidences, and comprehensive factual works achieved by worldwide researchers…
Shall we (continue to) engage in public debates with society? Yes! The question is more how to separate our personal opinions to objective facts, support citizens with our complex (and sometimes unclear) information, and ensure the real benefits to our societies! Likely, the new developed tools via Internet and media can help us on this.
Great thanks to all the organisers (Dr. Ramon Hanssen, Dr. Stef Lhermitte, Debbie Rietdijk, Irma Zomerdijk & Lidwien de Jong) for this great day! Let’s keep the debates alive and constructive!
The letter sent by AMS on 2017.03.13 to Mr. Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the US EPA agency.
Homepage Julien Chimot: a journey in Earth observation satellite science 