Sentinel-5P Evidence for Low-Carbon Energy Planning and Arctic Air-Quality Resilience in Yukon and Alaska

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a methodological framework for using satellite data to assess air quality and inform energy planning in remote regions.

🏢実務担当者:Offers a screening tool for communities and utilities to identify air-quality hotspots and prioritize clean energy investments.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the value of satellite monitoring for environmental regulation and climate resilience planning in underserved areas.

Remote Arctic and sub-Arctic communities face intersecting pressures from rapid climate change, high energy costs, combustion-based heating, and sparse environmental monitoring. In Yukon and Alaska, these conditions make air quality not only a public-health concern but also an important consideration for low-carbon energy planning and climate resilience. This study develops a six-year (2019–2024), paired-jurisdiction framework using Sentinel-5P TROPOMI carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) observations to provide screening-level evidence for Arctic air-quality management and cleaner energy transitions. Satellite data were quality-screened and processed in Google Earth Engine and Python and then analyzed through annual, seasonal, and monthly aggregation, hotspot mapping, and Mann–Kendall and Seasonal Mann–Kendall trend tests. Results reveal a persistent jurisdictional split. CO remained consistently higher in Alaska than in Yukon (0 .0296–0.0340 vs 0 .0271–0.0310 mol m−2), while NO2 was substantially higher in Yukon than in Alaska (4.65 × 10−5–5.18 ×10−5 vs 3.81 × 10−6–5.05 ×10−6 mol m−2). Seasonal contrasts were stable, with Alaska exceeding Yukon for CO in all seasons and Yukon exceeding Alaska for NO2 by roughly an order of magnitude. Monthly Seasonal Mann–Kendall analysis detected modest but significant CO declines in both jurisdictions, at about 1.5% per year, whereas NO2 showed no significant trend. Recurrent hotspots were concentrated in interior Alaska and northern Yukon for CO and along the Anchorage–Kenai corridor and northern Yukon for NO2. These findings suggest that Sentinel-5P can support low-carbon energy planning, smoke-season preparedness, inversion-time response, and equity-centered Arctic resilience in sparsely monitored northern regions. Received: 17 March 2025 | Revised: 13 July 2026 | Accepted: 18 July 2026 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Matthew McCarthy: Investigation, Visualization, Writing – original draft. Davoud Ghahremanlou: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Amir Ghahremanlou: Investigation, Methodology, Conceptualization, Data curation, Software, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing –original draft.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.47852/bonviewglce62029684first seen 2026-08-13 05:05:25