Clearing The Air: A NASA Google+ Hangout

Many people may not know it, but the quality of the air we breathe every day in the United States has been steadily improving in recent years. The major pollutant gases and particles that come from smokestacks and tail pipes are declining -- as measured for decades by the Environmental Protection Agency's network of ground sensors, and more recently even by NASA satellite instruments.
 
But there is still a ways to go. And there are still advancements to be made in how broadly and accurately we can measure air quality across the whole country.
 
Summer is here, when the possibility of "bad air" days begins to loom. And on July 14, NASA will launch the final leg in a multi-year airborne field campaign, called DISCOVER-AQ, designed to improve the long-term capability of measuring air quality from space. www.nasa.gov/discover-aq
 
Join NASA scientists Jim Crawford and Bryan Duncan and Chet Wayland of the EPA at 2 p.m. Tues., July 15 to talk about the ongoing and challenging work to better measure and understand air quality in the U.S.
 
You can ask questions of the panelists by either writing them in the comments section on this page or on Twitter using #askNASA .
 
Panelists:
Jim Crawford, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; Principal Investigator, DISCOVER-AQ
 
Chet Wayland, Environmental Protection Agency, Raleigh, North Carolina; Director, Air Quality Assessment Division
 
Bryan Duncan, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Aura mission Deputy Project Scientist

Daniel Jacob, head of NASA's Air Quality Applied Sciences team and Harvard University professor.