TROPOMI

The Dutch Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) is flying onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5p mission, launched in 2017. It focuses on detection of atmospheric trace gases relevant for air quality and climate, such as methane and carbon monoxide. Sentinel-5P is the result of close collaboration between ESA, the European Commission, the Netherlands Space Office, industry, data users and scientists. The TROPOMI instrument was co-funded by ESA and The Netherlands.

The TROPOMI instrument is a spectrometer measuring the solar light reflected by the Earth’s atmosphere in the UV-VIS-NIR and SWIR. As such it measures the concentrations of various key atmospheric constituents including ozone, NO₂, SO₂, CO, CH₄, CH2OH and aerosols.

The unique capability of TROPOMI is that it combines daily global coverage with city-scale spatial resolution. This is achieved through the push-broom concept where a 2600 km strip on Earth is observed in less than a second and imaged on the 2D-detectors thereby obtaining a few hundred observations each viewing an area of ~3.5-7 x 5.5 km² on Earth.

Key technology for the SWIR spectrometer of TROPOMI is the immersed grating which was developed by SRON in collaboration with TNO.

SRON is the co-Principal Investigator (PI) institute for TROPOMI and responsible for the CO and CH4 data products. The PI-institute KNMI is responsible for ozone profiles, NO₂, and aerosol data products.

Tropomi is a project in partnership between Airbus Defence and Space, KNMI, SRON and TNO, commissioned by NSO and ESA. Airbus Defence and Space is the main contractor for the construction phase. KNMI and SRON are responsible for the scientific management. TROPOMI is funded by the following ministries of the Dutch government: the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.