NAIROBI GROUND STATION ESTABLISHED AS PART OF WORLDWIDE POLLUTION-MONITORING NETWORK

NAIROBI GROUND STATION ESTABLISHED AS PART OF WORLDWIDE

POLLUTION-MONITORING NETWORK

NAIROBI, 27 February (UNEP) -- Nairobi has become a key lynchpin in an international effort to monitor the repair of the ozone layer, the Earth's protective shield, and pollution from events such as forest fires and charcoal burning.

A high-tech monitoring station has been installed that can detect ozone, emitted from the East African part of the tropics and formed from sources such as industry, transport, agriculture and the burning of biomass

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is involved in the work, said:  “Ozone is a curious chemical.  In the upper atmosphere, known as the stratosphere, it acts as a shield, protecting life on Earth from damaging levels of solar radiation.  In the lower atmosphere, known as the troposphere, small amounts are helpful, acting as a detergent to clean the air”.

“But high amounts, formed by sunlight mixing with human-made pollution from cars, factories and other sources, can be harmful.  These smogs, increasingly a phenomenon in developing as well as developed countries, can prove fatal for vulnerable people such as those with heart conditions and asthma.  They can also damage car tyres, electricity cables and crops”, he said.

One of the key roles of the new station, which was inaugurated today, is to help unravel the fate of ozone-damaging chemicals produced in the region from both human-made and natural sources such as vegetation.  Scientists are unsure as to how much of this pollution makes it way into the stratosphere and how much remains closer to the ground.

Understanding this is crucial to knowing how quickly the ozone layer may recover after decades of destruction by substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).  Once in the stratosphere, ozone-damaging chemicals can travel north and south towards the poles where, in the colder conditions, the layer is at highest risk.

The Nairobi Validation Station, the first of its kind in tropical and sub-tropical Africa and installed within the grounds of UNEP at Gigiri, is part of a network that includes the recently launched European Space Agency ENVISAT

satellite.  The network includes other stations in places like Germany and Svaalbard in the Arctic and an aircraft known as Falcon which is currently criss-crossing the globe taking airborne observations.

The research is being coordinated by Professor John Burrows of the University of Bremen in Germany who is cooperating with other groups and researchers including UNEP's Ozone Secretariat based in Nairobi and Kenyan meteorologists.

Professor Burrows said the work had other important objectives with implications for people in Kenya, Africa and beyond.  The network will help monitor local air quality in Nairobi.  The scientist said it might be possible to eventually assist in producing radio and television-based pollution forecasts for the next 24 hours when smog and other harmful air pollution levels are expected to be high.

These could be accompanied by health warnings for vulnerable groups such as those with heart disease or breathing difficulties, advising them not to exercise or to take additional medicines.  Such warnings are routine in developed countries but, because of a shortage of modern monitoring stations, such services are rare in developing ones.

The network also has implications for tracking pollution worldwide.  ENVISAT can detect such phenomena as pollution arising from forest fires in Central Africa.  It can also follow the pollution, arising from such fires.  ENVISAT has already tracked such pollution traveling hundreds and thousands of kilometers eastwards to Australia.

For more information, please contact:  Eric Falt, Spokesperson/Director of UNEP's Division of Communications and Public Information, on Tel:  +254-2-623292, Mobile:  +254-733-682656, E-mail:  eric.falt@unep.org or Nick Nuttall, UNEP Head of Media, on Tel:  +254-2-623084, Mobile:  +254-733-632755, E-mail:  nick.nuttall@unep.org

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