BALTIMORE -- The University of Maryland, Baltimore County's (UMBC) innovative "Smog Blog" air quality tracking web site celebrated its sixth anniversary Sept. 23, 2009, and recently helped launch a spin-off Central American air pollution blog based in Panama.

The U.S. Smog Blog and Panamanian SERVIR blog offer realtime analysis and an extensive archive of satellite imagery and air quality data for scientists, allowing for instant communication about important pollution events. SERVIR was created in partnership with UMBC, NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).

Smog Blog entries for each site are the products of analysis by science faculty and students from UMBC, the University of Panama in Panama City and Battelle Memorial Institute, who look at incoming data from satellite sensors and merge it with information from sparsely-distributed ground-based monitoring stations. Bloggers then post images, and make daily entries, providing a sort of “one-stop shopping” for information on air pollution in North America and across the globe.

Learn more about the Smog Blog in the upcoming Winter 2009 issue of UMBC Magazine.

About the U.S. Air Quality Weblog

The Smog Blog is a daily diary of air quality in the U.S. using information from NASA satellites, ground-based lidar, EPA monitoring networks, and other monitors. Interpretation and analysis is provided by UMBC staff.