Europe's new Sentinel-4 mission delivers first look at hourly air pollution maps

Europe's new Sentinel-4 mission delivers first look at hourly air pollution maps
by Erica Marchand
Paris, France (SPX) Oct 22, 2025

Europe has taken a major step toward real-time air quality monitoring with the release of the first images from the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission. Operating aboard EUMETSAT's Meteosat Third Generation Sounder 1 (MTG-S1) satellite, Sentinel-4 has begun transmitting hourly observations of air pollutants across Europe - marking a milestone in the continent's environmental monitoring capabilities.

Air pollution remains the leading environmental health threat in Europe, linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in 2022. The Sentinel-4 mission will enable authorities to issue faster, more accurate air quality forecasts and health alerts, helping to reduce exposure, improve public health, and mitigate economic losses tied to pollution.

The first preliminary images, captured on 8 October 2025, highlight Sentinel-4's powerful detection capabilities. They reveal nitrogen dioxide concentrations over northern Italy's Po Valley, high ozone levels spanning the Balkans, Bulgaria, and Greece, and sulphur dioxide plumes from both industrial and natural sources.

Currently in its commissioning phase following the successful launch of MTG-S1 on 1 July, the mission is undergoing rigorous testing to ensure data accuracy and reliability. Once fully operational, Sentinel-4 will provide hourly updates from geostationary orbit - allowing scientists to monitor how pollutants evolve throughout the day and distinguish differences between urban centres and surrounding regions.

Phil Evans, Director-General of EUMETSAT, emphasized the mission's importance: "Exposure to pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, and fine particulate matter affects millions of Europeans every day, costing society hundreds of billions of euros annually. Copernicus Sentinel-4 represents a fundamental advance in our ability to monitor these pollutants. These first images demonstrate the mission's transformative potential to save lives and improve health outcomes by feeding into better air quality and climate monitoring across Europe."

Lieven Bydekerke, EUMETSAT Copernicus Programme Manager, added: "These first data provide an exciting early glimpse of Copernicus Sentinel-4's ability to capture rapid changes in air pollution across an entire continent - tracking how pollutants that are a major cause of respiratory and cardiovascular disease move and evolve throughout the day. Hourly observations of these hazardous pollutants over the whole of Europe have never been possible before."

The Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission is part of the European Union's Earth observation program and is implemented through a partnership between the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), and EUMETSAT. EUMETSAT operates the MTG-S1 platform and manages global data dissemination, while the data will feed into the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).