A team from the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore) installed the first station of a network that will help assess how air quality varies with space and time in Singapore. The team hopes that their data and findings will contribute to more accurate forecasts of air quality in Singapore.
The station, which is located on the rooftop of NTU Singapore, is a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) station. It records data every second over a vertical distance of up to 6 kilometres (km) above ground about the wind and the location of aerosols, which are air particles in the air that can be related to haze, urban emissions or volcanic eruptions. The station was installed in September 2023 by members of the EOS Centre for Geohazard Observations and of the Air Pollution and Health team
Photo of the LiDAR station installed on the rooftop of NTU Singapore (Credit: Jeffrey Encillo/Earth Observatory of Singapore)
Two more stations will be installed across the country, in the Central and North parts of Singapore. The 3-station network will form the ‘3-Dimensional Real-timE Atmospheric Monitoring System at Singapore (3DREAMS@SG)’, which will measure the temporal, spatial and vertical distribution of aerosols and wind in Singapore. Using these data, the scientists will generate a 3D picture of how the air pollutants are transported in the atmosphere across Singapore.
Photo of Assoc. Prof. Steve Yim (pointing at the screen), Dr Huang Tao (front) and Dr Tingting Fang (back) looking at data collected by the next LiDAR station that will be installed by the team in Singapore (Source: Lauriane Chardot/Earth Observatory of Singapore)
Read about the media coverage related to this new station on the
NTU website.