Cleaner Air in the Middle East: At What Price?

Currently, the Middle East is experiencing a "breath of fresh air" due to drastic atmospheric changes caused by the dropping levels of nitrogen dioxide in the area over the past five years.

Nitrogen oxide, a highly reactive gas that contributes to the production of smog, and one poses a great hazard to health, is released from fossil fuel use. It dramatically affects air quality and climate. Historically, the Middle East has high levels of NO2, particularly over major cities, where industrial areas are common, according to Nature Asia.

Jos Lelieved, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, in Mainz, Germany, spearheaded the study, which was recently published in Science Advances.

In previous years, projections like this were often linked to levels of CO2  - which Lelieveld says is "not a valid predictor of climate trends in the Middle East." He decidedly tracked NO2, which is also a byproduct of road traffic exhaust, and has a similarly hazardous effect on health.

"In the Middle East, large changes of NO2 have occurred," Lelieveld told a press conference on Aug. 20, describing the atmospheric changes as unique worldwide. "These [findings] disagree with scenarios used in prediction of air pollution and climate change for the future."

This news is positive for the Middle East, an area that does not receive much positive news; however, it comes as a double-edged sword.

The study found that the main reason for the dip in NO2 levels is due to the slowing of industrial work, caused by the political upheaval and conflicts taking place in the area. So, despite the cleaner air, the area's problems are far from being resolved, according to the Christian Science Monitor. 

"I don't want to create the illusion that air pollution measurements [taken] from space will help people in areas like Iraq and Syria. It's a simple diagnostic of what is going on, which is possibly helpful because in many cases when policies are implemented and emissions are estimated, you can improve emissions [based on these numbers]," said Lelieveld. 

This study was a landmark one as well, being the first to use both stationary and orbiting satellites to produce a data set in high resolution, over a decade-long period. It sets a precedent for further studies like this one, and could allow each country and their policymakers to analyze this sort of data.

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