The NASA TEMPO mission is scheduled for launch in October 2022 and will be hosted on Intelsat 40e, a commercial geostationary communications satellite, for providing hourly daytime observations of pollutants over a Field of Regard (FOR) covering Greater North America. For each geospatial scene in the FOR, the TEMPO grating spectrometer will measure the solar backscattered radiance from ultraviolet (UV; 290-490 nm) to visible (540-740 nm) wavelengths with a spectral resolution and sampling of 0.6 and 0.2 nm, respectively, and at suburban spatial resolution of 2.0 km x 4.75 km at the center of the FOR. The unique measurement capabilities of TEMPO will allow for the retrieval of aerosol and cloud parameters, along with the major elements in the tropospheric ozone (O3) chemistry cycle consisting of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), formaldehyde (H2CO), glyoxal (C2H2O2), water vapor (H2O), and UVB radiation. With its multi-spectral capabilities, TEMPO will also provide enhanced sensitivity to O3 in the lowest 2 km of the troposphere, thereby characterizing boundary layer, free tropospheric, and stratospheric O3. The TEMPO mission will also commit up to 25% of its observing time to non-standard (“high time”) observations with temporal resolution as high as 10 minutes over selected portions of the FOR. Altogether, the unprecedented spatiotemporal observations from TEMPO will greatly advance the monitoring of the rapidly varying emissions and chemistry that governs our air quality. See the TEMPO Mission Page for more detail.

TEMPO Early Adopters

An Early Adopter program was established in 2019 to enhance interactions between the TEMPO Science Team and the community of researchers and end users. The goal of the Early Adopter program is to understand and demonstrate the suite of capabilities and application benefits of TEMPO data before launch to promote quick and effective use of future operational data products. A key component of the program is the generation and dissemination of synthetic TEMPO data along with data from current applicable sensors to enable early use and analysis by Early Adopters. These pre-launch activities will inform end users on the impact of TEMPO data in their research and operations, identify advantages and limitations, and provide feedback to the TEMPO Science Team for understanding how products can be tailored to meet end users' needs. Overall, these activities aim to maximize the value of future TEMPO data products and prolong mission lifetime.

TEMPO Early Adopter Registration

Objectives

Actively engage with a broad spectrum of stakeholders/end-users within the air quality and public health communities to maximize the value of TEMPO data products for applications

Emulate future TEMPO capabilities using current systems (space-borne, surface networks, model/synthetic calculations) to prepare end-users for operational TEMPO data.

Identify key improvements to data products, files, and data interfaces to align TEMPO Mission to end user needs.

Application Focus Areas

Air Quality Monitoring & Forecasting
Air Quality Rule & Regulation Making
Pollution Emissions
Agricultural Monitoring & Health
Human Health
Weather Modeling & Forecasting

Experimental Opportunities

TEMPO Green Paper (pdf)
SPIE Version (pdf)
  1. Up to 25% of observing time will be devoted to non-standard operations: Time resolution higher (10 min or less), E/W spatial coverage less
  2. Two types of studies under regular or non-standard operations
    • Events (e.g., eruptions, fires, dust storms, etc.)
    • Experiments (e.g., agriculture, forestry, NOx, etc.)
  3. TEMPO team will work with experimenters concerning Image Navigation & Registration (i.e., pointing resolution & accuracy)
  4. Experiments could occur during commissioning phase
  5. Can initiate a non-standard, pre-loaded scan pattern within several hours
  6. Send your ideas to a TEMPO team member

NASA SPoRT Background & Collaboration

The SPoRT Center was established in 2002 for transitioning unique satellite observations and research capabilities to end users to improve short term forecasting and decision support. SPoRT team members work within a research to operations/operations to research paradigm to introduce experimental products to the operational environment via active involvement of end users. Involving the end users in the process ensures the products being developed by the researchers meet the end users' needs. This highly successful paradigm will be utilized in pre-launch activities of the TEMPO Mission to engage the air quality and public health communities regarding the capabilities of TEMPO.

NASA SPoRT research to operations / operations to research paradigm
Technical Contact: Dr. Aaron Naeger (aaron.naeger@nasa.gov)
Responsible Official: Dr. Gary Jedlovec (gary.jedlovec@nasa.gov)
Page Curator: Paul Meyer (paul.meyer@nasa.gov)