NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Gulf of Mexico Health & Air Quality

Send in the Clouds: Examining Air Quality in the Gulf of Mexico


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>> Amanda: Aerosols and trace gas emissions are primarily responsible for affecting air quality within Earth’s lower troposphere. These pollutants are produced by a variety of both natural and anthropogenic sources including volcanic eruptions, biomass burning, and the consumption of fossil fuels. Offshore oil and natural gas production related activities are another source that produces a variety of criteria pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions.Emissions from offshore drilling can impact onshore air quality, causing negative cardiovascular and respiratory health issues along with environmental impacts. 

>> Lori:  Our partners at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management follow the US EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards to ensure that offshore activities do not significantly impact the air quality of surrounding states. BOEM manages about 3,400 production platforms over 32 million acres of leased land on the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico, shown here. BOEM requires that oil and gas platform and non-platform sources including drilling rigs, engines, pipe laying vessels, and helicopters in the Gulf of Mexico record monthly emissions measurements. Data from Gulfwide emissions inventories for the years 2000, 2005, 2008, and 2011 were aggregated to determine monthly and annual emissions outputs.

>> Amanda: However these in situ point data from individual platform and non-platform sources throughout the gulf do not provide the regional coverage necessary to answer larger scale scientific questions over time. There are a number of NASAs Earth observing satellites and sensors that measure aerosol and pollutant concentrations globally. We utilized data from Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer for the retrieval of aerosol optical depth, which serves as a proxy for PM2.5 emissions and Aura’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument for total column nitrogen dioxide emissions.

>> Lori: First, we used NASA’s GIOVANNI online visualization tool for preliminary analysis of Level 3 data for the Gulf of Mexico over 15 years. Then, we processed monthly and annual means of gridded Level 2 satellite data at a 0.1 degree spatial resolution and collocated those data with BOEM emissions inventory data. We identified hot spots of emissions producing platform and non-platform sources and extracted the satellite retrievals at these locations. We correlated the emissions measurements from the in situ and satellite data sources.

>> Amanda: Satellite measurements of aerosols and trace gas emissions can supplement the collection of in situ data from oil and natural gas production related sources to ensure that these pollutants fall within onshore air quality standards. This methodology can be used for continuing emissions monitoring and applied to other pollutants by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management throughout the Gulf of Mexico.

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