With air pollution linked to millions of deaths around the world, it has never been more important to monitor the air we breathe. Today marks a significant step forward as a deal is secured to build a crucial space sensor for tracking the world's air quality.

Researchers from three continents gathered at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands for the inaugural Alcantara initative workshop – fostering cooperation between research groups in Europe and those beyond, to jointly tackle key knowledge gaps in space research.

Mesoscale marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) phenomena are frequently observed by satellite sensors. They appear either as organised cloud patterns in visible-infrared satellite images or as coherent patterns on the sea surface in microwave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images.

Satellite measurements show that nitrogen dioxide in the lower atmosphere over parts of Europe and the US has fallen over the past decade. More than 15 years of atmospheric observations have revealed trends in air quality.