A number of residents across the Greater Toronto Area have reported sightings of a low-flying plane circling the skies over the weekend.
It turns out that southern Ontarians had a closer encounter of the NASA kind.
The U.S. space agency tells Global News it’s in the process of mapping air pollution above North America’s largest cities.
“Our overall objective is to study urban air quality,” explained Rebecca Schwantes, one of the lead scientists on the project. “We are targeting not just Toronto, but also New York City, Los Angeles, and also Chicago.”
The project is called AEROMMA 23, which stands for Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas.
In short, NASA is looking to sample the air where people are.
The agency is currently harnessing the tools at their disposal, getting as close to the surface as they’re allowed in order to better grasp the quality of the air people are breathing.
While vehicle emissions have long been a key pollutant, they will be honing in on other sources as well.
“Things like perfumes, deodorants, fragrances that are added to laundry detergents and soaps,” lists Schwantes. “All these consumer products that you think about: ‘Oh, they’re small amounts, right?’ But you know, over a big urban area where there’s a lot of people, they can be quite additive.”
This also comes on the heels of TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) being launched into orbit this spring. It is the first satellite instrument that will gauge air quality over North America on an hourly basis during daylight hours.
NASA tells us in total, there were three aircraft flying above the GTA on Friday and Saturday. The DC-8 was spotted flying at low altitude.
“It’s being flown at very low levels of 1,500 feet, 500 metres above ground,” explained Michael Thomson, the DC-8 aircraft mission manager.
Thomson tells Global News a lot of coordination is done beforehand with local air traffic control authorities in order to safely conduct their missions.
Mission planners are also in place coordinating flights and working with scientists.
“It’s timed with the mornings and afternoons because the levels of pollution can be different in mornings and afternoons, and the activity of people.”
And while scientists weren’t initially setting out to track the impact of wildfire smoke on air pollution, it’s certainly being noticed.
“Even though that wasn’t our original target, it’s going to become a target science objective for this campaign,” said Rebecca Schwantes.
“We sampled so much smoke and we haven’t had a campaign like this where we were able to sample smoke interacting with urban pollution before. At least not on the scale that this campaign is.”
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