Tracking Urban Atmospheric Pollutants using Sentinel-5P Satellite Data

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02592v1
• Date: Thu, 21 May 2026 15:59:04 GMT
• Title: Tracking Urban Atmospheric Pollutants using Sentinel-5P Satellite Data
• Abstract summary: Urban nitrogen dioxide ($NO$) is a key indicator of combustion-related air pollution and exhibits strong spatial and temporal variability in cities.<n>This study presents a satellite-based framework for tracking urban $NO$ pollution using tropospheric column observations from Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI over Guayas Province, Ecuador.
• Score: 0.7090165638014331
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Urban nitrogen dioxide ($NO_2$) is a key indicator of combustion-related air pollution and exhibits strong spatial and temporal variability in cities. This study presents a satellite-based framework for tracking urban $NO_2$ pollution using tropospheric column observations from Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI over Guayas Province, Ecuador. Rather than estimating surface concentrations, the methodology emphasizes robust distributional metrics, including the median and upper-tail percentiles ($P_{90}$, $P_{95}$, and $P_{99}$), to characterize background conditions and localized pollution extremes at the canton scale. Multi-year satellite observations are aggregated annually and analyzed using unsupervised K-means clustering to identify characteristic pollution regimes without predefined thresholds. Results show that highly urbanized cantons consistently exhibit elevated extreme $NO_2$ values and greater variability, while less urbanized areas display lower and more homogeneous patterns. The proposed approach provides an interpretable and scalable tool for urban air-quality assessment in data-scarce regions using satellite observations alone. The implementation is publicly available on GitHub https://hvelesaca.github.io/sentinel-5P-clustering/.

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