Mission scientists and flight crew of Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality (ASIA-AQ) on Febrruary 8, 2024 give members of the press a tour on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) DC-8 flying laboratory and Gill Aircraft at Clark International Airport in Pampanga. The study will be used in collecting detailed air quality data over multiple locations in Asia including the Philippines that will improve the understanding of local air quality issues. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News.

MANILA — Initial findings from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's visit to the Philippines will be available in about a year, but 

developing mitigation and technological plans to improve air quality in the country could take several years.

The Asian Air Quality (ASIA-AQ) mission in early February conducted research flights with specially-equipped Gulfstream G-III and Douglas DC-8 aircraft. 

 The DC-8 flying science laboratory, equipped with advanced instruments, navigated at low altitudes over Metro Manila and other areas of the Philippines from February 11 to 15 to collect data that will be used for the mitigation plans.

Meet the Filipino team joining NASA's research on Metro Manila air quality

THE PROCESS

"The first step is doing the quality control and quality assurance. So, we're going to make sure that we have the final calibration for the data and we make sure that we have really high quality data and then we'll start analyzing it," NASA's Tropospheric Composition Earth Sciences Division program manager Barry Lefer told ABS-CBN News in an interview.

He said the team will return "a year from now" to present their Rapid Science Synthesis Report of initial results.

Lefer added that final analysis and studies will be available in roughly 3 years.

"So, we're going to do that in the Philippines, we'll do that in Korea, we'll do that in Thailand, and do that in Malaysia. So it's about a year for the initial analysis. And then the final analysis takes about three years," he said.

He said parts of the research may be published ahead in scientific journals and that NASA will also "make a special journal where all the results are." 

"Well, sometimes it ends up in different journals. But we'll put all that knowledge together in our final report, which will be about three years from now," he added.

Asked why they chose the Philippines, Lefer said that they would want to help countries in need of improving their air quality monitoring efforts.

"We were looking at the 20 countries that were in the (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer) field with regards to the the countries being sampled by this geostationary satellite... and the Philippines was one of the perfect countries. First of all, they were very excited to work with us," the official said.

"Second, they have good ground-based monitoring network. And third, they were just starting to do some air quality forecasting, and those are the things that we really thought: 'They're ready to start looking at satellites to help them make better decisions about how to improve their air quality, and have better forecasts for air quality in the future'," he added.

Lefer stressed that NASA will be working with local scientists, acknowledging that they are the experts in their fields.

"But we want to show them how they can use satellite data to make better decisions about their air quality. Because I think the Philippines is in a perfect spot to benefit from satellites. You have very smart, very talented scientists."

BETTER AIR QUALITY MONITORING STRATEGY

He said that NASA hopes to help Philippine experts monitor air quality given the country's limited resources.

More than just the technology, Lefer said that air quality monitoring takes a lot of strategy to have an efficient mapping of the area.

"This is a very common problem. Air quality monitoring stations are very expensive, and so, one of the hopes that we have is we can use, help the Philippines use satellite data and aircraft data to prioritize what are the most useful places to put additional monitors," Lefer said.

"[Y]ou can't put monitors everywhere, so having a satellite which sees the whole country, but not at very fine detail, really helps them to prioritize where to put the future monitors," he added.

WHAT THEY ARE MEASURING

In monitoring air quality, scientists look at pollutants such as particulate matter — particularly fine particles, or those that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller —and ozone, Lefer explained.

These pollutants have been shown to be "very harmful" to human health.

"So there's two types of pollutants. There's the kind that comes out the tailpipe of your car or out of the smokestack of a refinery. And so soot is one example of that black soot you see coming out of a diesel engine," the expert said.

"But a lot of the PM is formed chemically in the atmosphere. Ozone does not come out of the tailpipe. It's the NOx and the organic compounds that come out of different sources that react chemically to produce ozone," he added.

He said NASA hopes to help the Department of Environment and Natural Resources "do a better job of forecasting what tomorrow's air quality is going to be, but also examine what control measures they could use."

With the project, Lefer hopes that it would be a good bond with other countries as air quality efforts also plays an important role in crafting solutions to climate change.

He said he hopes collaboration with the Philippines and with other countris will lead to the development of a "family" of scientists using ground-based, airborne and satellite data "to give better information to the decision makers in Asia where they can help improve air quality for everybody."

Although even the preliminary results are still a year away from being released, Lefer already has a recommendation for better air quality:

"Learning less fossil fuels, that's the primary source of a lot of these pollutants. We can both improve people's health and reduce the climate change."