Greetings from HAQAST

Dear HAQAST Community,
We have updates on the next HAQAST public meeting, new datasets, plus more upcoming events and opportunities of interest!
 
Save the Date! - HAQAST Showcase
Our next meeting, the HAQAST Showcase, is being planned for Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC.  This meeting will highlight success over the last four years, including increasing public engagement with NASA data, measuring health risks in unmonitored regions, and improving  decision-making tools.
  • To register, please indicate your interest in attending in-person or online on the registration form.
  • For stakeholders, travel funding will be available and awarded on a rolling basis. Please see eligibility criteria and complete the travel funding application here.
  • Interested in presenting? Submit a title for a pre-recorded virtual flash talk here.
Please visit our website at https://haqast.org/haqast-showcase-2025/ to learn about the event. We hope to see you at the celebration of this generation of HAQAST!
 
HAQAST News

American Lung Association Releases "Something in the Air" Report
The American Lung Association (ALA) released a new report, "Something in the Air: Bridging the Air Quality Data Gap with Satellite Technology", which emphasizes how emerging technologies, such as satellites, can help critical air quality information to underserved communities without ground-based monitors. The report calls for various initiatives from federal and state governments, along with individual actions, to overall improve human health related to poor air quality. The analysis of satellite-derived air quality data was conducted by HAQAST Lead, Dr. Tracey Holloway, and other members of the Holloway Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with data from HAQAST Member Randall Martin's group. Read more about the ALA's new report here.

The Lancet 2024 Countdown on Health and Climate Change
In a recent report, The Lancet emphasizes the urgent and growing threat of climate change on public health. Despite the environmental goals set during the 2015 Paris Agreement, 2023 marked a year for record-high temperatures which has led to unprecedented climate extremes and drastic public health effects around the world. This report includes key findings related to health hazards and impacts, climate adaptation and resilience, mitigation actions, economics, and political engagement. This report includes contributions by HAQAST Member Yang Liu.  Read more about the 2024 Countdown report here.
 
Upcoming Meetings and Events of Interest

  • November 8 - DANA (Dust Alliance of North America) Fall 2024 Webinar Series- Keziyah Yisrael-Gayle, University of California, Riverside. Lipopolysaccharides from the Salton Sea microbiome drives pulmonary inflammation. Fridays at 1 pm ET. Register here.
  • December 8 - PACE Applications Workshop: Putting PACE data to work across the Earth System will be held free, in-person from 9am to 5pm. Workshop content will be cross-disciplinary, spanning atmospheric, terrestrial, and aquatic science & applications. Register here.
  • December 9-13, 2024 - American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting 2024: Washington D.C.  
  • January 12-16, 2025 - American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting 2025: New Orleans, LA
 
NASA ARSET Trainings

  • November 6, 13 and 20 - An Introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Its Applications is an online webinar will provide an introduction to SAR, explore the type of applications that each sensor can best address, and discuss online sources of openly available SAR data, along with tools, software, and other resources to facilitate SAR analysis. The webinar will be held 11:30am - 1:30pm EST and will also be offered in English and Spanish.
  • November 19 and 21 - Methane Observations for Large Emission Event Detection and Monitoring is an introductory two-part, online training which will introduce the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center and provide an overview of how methane observations from the Earth surface Mineral dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission can be used to identify and monitor areas of high methane. The course will be held 11am - 12:30pm EST and will be offered in both English and Spanish.
 
Funding Opportunities

Heat Tabletop Exercise Planning Challenge
  • This challenge, in partnership with NOAA's Regional Collaboration Network and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS), provides an opportunity for various governments to work with community-based organizations and other key partners in developing situation manuals for novel heat tabletop exercises. Submit your manual by the deadline for a chance to win a total of $200,000 in prizes! More here. Deadline November 15th.

Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology
  • Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST F.5) solicits proposals for graduate student-designed and performed research projects relevant to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The graduate student shall be the primary author, with input or supervision from the proposal's Principal Investigator (PI) or mentor, as appropriate. FINESST awards are research grants for up to three years at up to $50K per year. Learn more here. Proposals are due February 5th, 2025.
 
Call for Manuscripts

  • Geospatial data applications for environmental justice. This special collection from GeoHealth will feature applications of these novel geospatial technologies and data for understanding and addressing environmental injustice. Submissions are due December 31, 2024. Read more here.
  • Dust and dust storms: From physical processes to human health, safety, and welfare. GeoHealth welcomes submissions focused on both natural and contaminated dust events, that examine dust and dust storms from a multidisciplinary perspective. Submissions are due May 31, 2025. Read more here.
  • TEMPO Data Products, Science and Applications. This special collection (JGR: Atmospheres, Geophysical Research Letters, and Earth and Space Science) focuses on TEMPO data products, including their development, demonstration of societal benefits, usage through data assimilation or analysis to improve understanding Earth and atmospheric processes, and their synergy with other satellite data products. Submissions are due December 31, 2025. More here.
 
Data

GHGSat Methane Concentration and Emission Data Now Available
Data acquired by NASA for the successfully concluded scientific evaluation of GHGSat under the space agency’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) program is now available through the NASA Earthdata portal. The dataset consists of georeferenced per-pixel methane column abundances, methane concentration maps, methane emission rates with error estimates, and associated metadata for global anthropogenic and naturogenic point sources for the period from January 2021 to May 2024. Learn more and access the dataset here.

Toxic Prisons Mapping Project and Interactive Dataset
Postdoctoral researcher Ufuoma Ovienmhada has led a participatory research initiative called The Toxic Prisons Mapping Project to map environmental hazards that prisons, jails, and detention centers face. The project includes satellite-derived PM2.5 data from Randall Martin's group, data on wildfire activity that uses the NASA/NOAA VIIRS satellite sensors, and data on land surface temperature from the Landsat satellites. The map can be used to evaluate historical patterns of environmental burdens, monitor real-time hazards, and engage with stories from people who have been incarcerated in toxic prisons.

MERRA-2 bias-corrected global hourly surface PM2.5 dataset
The MERRA-2 bias-corrected global hourly surface PM2.5 dataset is now publicly available. This dataset, developed by HAQAST PIs Pawan Gupta and co-I Alqamah Sayeed, has been derived by using the machine learning method, convolutional neural network. The dataset covers the period from 2000 to the present and will be updated through the end of 2024.  Please read more from the data release newsletter and data DOIs.

Gridded TROPOMI NO2 Data Available for Download
Gridded 1 x 1 km monthly, seasonal, and annual satellite TROPOMI NO2 data is available for download on the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) from efforts of HAQAST co-investigator Dan Goldberg. The dates range from May 2018-present. There is a collection both global and continental United States.

Preliminary TEMPO Data Now Available
TEMPO Version 03 (V03) Beta Level 1, 2, and 3 data are available as of May 20, 2024. These datasets are at beta maturity, meaning the product is minimally validated but may still contain significant errors; it is based on product quick looks using the initial calibration parameters. Because the products at this stage have minimal validation, users should refrain from making conclusive public statements regarding science and applications of the data products until a product is designated at the provisional validation status. Learn more about accessing the data here!
 
Resources

Health and Air Quality Community Forum
The Health and Air Quality Community Forum is a new resource intended for all levels of expertise to collaborate about health and air quality related topics. Everyone can view the forum and sign up to post questions, answers, and comments to discuss with peers and experts in the field. Come join our online community, and please share with anyone you think would be interested! Access the forum at this link: https://haq.community.forum/
 
Connect with HAQAST

We are always appreciative of your interest and involvement in the team. If you have colleagues who might also be interested, please invite them to sign up on our mailing list. You can also follow and connect with HAQAST on Twitter and LinkedIn, or reach out personally with Tracey (taholloway@wisc.edu) and Jenny (bratburd@wisc.edu).
All the best,
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