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The Hub Talks: Probing the urban atmosphere from ground: the BAQUNIN project

Name: The Hub Talks: Probing the urban atmosphere from ground: the BAQUNIN project
Start: 2026-03-26T15:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-03-26T16:00:00+01:00

March 26 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm CET

Speaker: Stefano Casadio ESA

The Boundary-layer Air Quality analysis Using Network of INstruments (BAQUNIN) Atmospheric Composition monitoring and Cal/Val supersite (www.baqunin.eu), will be described with particular focus on the urban component. The BAQUNIN activities started on 2015 (ESA IDEAS+ WP), with increasing support from ESA and EUMETSAT in the following 10 years. The project consortium is composed by SERCO Italy, Univ. Sapienza, CNR-ISAC, CNR-IIA, ARPA Valle d’Aosta, and Sardegna Clima. Fruitful collaborations have been established with space agencies such as NASA and JAXA, and with research institutes, e.g. the University of Thessaloniki (GR) and INOE (RO).
The mandate of BAQUNIN is to operate state-of-art instrumentation devoted to atmospheric monitoring and satellite Cal/Val in different environments, being the urban observatory in the centre of Rome the pivotal component. The data distribution policy is to grant free and open access to all products through the BAQUNIN website,
and through PGN, AERONET, COCCON, EUBREWNET, SKYNET international networks. Cal/Val data are made available through the ESA Validation Data Centre (EVDC).
Starting from the main motivations that lead to the realisation of the project and continuing with the description of the current setup and instrumental suite of the urban observatory, the following concrete examples will then be discussed:
a) long-term data series in urban environment: 30 years NO2 vertical column from ground and space
b) validation of satellite products: trace-gases, GHG, cloud top/bottom height, aerosols
c) correction of “reference” data: the AERONET AOD at 440nm case

For more BAQUNIN details, documents, and open data access: http://www.baqunin.eu