THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2024 35 Mary Tran is an IT project management consultant specializing in agile transformation, organizational development, and communication. She joined the Greening Diplomacy Initiative in the State Department Office of Management Strategy and Solutions (M/SS) in 2019 to spearhead development of the air quality mobile application ZephAir and to support the Department of State’s air quality monitoring program, DOSAir. A partnership with NASA takes the State Department’s already successful air quality monitoring system to the next level. BY MARY TRAN AI AIR QUALITY FORECASTING A State-NASA Partnership When The Foreign Service Journal published my article about air quality and the Greening Diplomacy Initiative (GDI) in 2021, the world was a different place. We were one year into a global pandemic. Travel restrictions were in full effect. The race to create a vaccine for COVID-19 had begun. And the sky was clear. Pandemic-related lockdowns had restricted many activities that ordinarily contribute to air pollution such as industry, transportation, and power generation. A study done by The George Washington University showed significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in major urban areas such as Detroit, New York, FOCUS ON THE CLIMATE DIPLOMACY LANDSCAPE and Atlanta. The major pollution sources in these areas were heavy commuter routes and international airports; decreases aligned with the reduced vehicle and flight traffic during the domestic lockdown. There was also unprecedented temporary improvement in air quality around the world. In India, for example, data collected from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite indicated that the levels of air pollution in the northern region of the country were at a 20-year low. Unfortunately, those temporary gains are now gone, and climate change is worsening air pollution through increased wildfires, drought, and energy demands. And the world still faces massive data gaps, places where no reliable real-time data exists—data that could help forecast potential disasters and allow people to plan their response. (For more on data gaps, please see the article by Ruiz and Ober on page 31.) And that’s why we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with NASA that makes the State Department’s ZephAir app, already a game changer in providing real-time air quality data, even more powerful. The project represents a leap forward in data availability for those who do not have sufficient groundbased monitors and/or local expertise to develop forecasts. Using historical, satellite, and model data, NASA can now produce an AI-generated air pollution forecast, not just for the 80 embassies and consulates that have ground-based monitors,
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