Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
Nitrogen dioxide within 25 km of central Khartoum, yearly mean, 10¹³ molecules per cm², Sentinel-5P satellite, 2019–2025.
- 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
- 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
- 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
- 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
- 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
- 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
- 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
- 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
- 9. Nearly two in three people in Africa are still offline
- 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
- 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
- 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
- 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
- 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
- 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
- 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
- 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
- 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
- 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
- 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
- 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
- 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
- 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
- 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum averaged 129 in 2025, down from 210 in 2019. Every year from 2019 to 2022 sat between 189 and 211.
March 2024, Khartoum's lowest month in the record from May 2018: less than half the 184 of April 2023, the month the war began.
January to September 2026 averaged 161, up from 119 in the same months of 2024, but still 23% below 2019's 208.
the numbers & method
| Year | Khartoum | Port Sudan |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 210 | 82 |
| 2020 | 189 | 80 |
| 2021 | 211 | 89 |
| 2022 | 199 | 84 |
| 2023 | 157 | 91 |
| 2024 | 118 | 88 |
| 2025 | 129 | 94 |
Claim types Fact · Interpretation
KNMI/TEMIS monthly mean tropospheric NO2 columns from TROPOMI on Copernicus Sentinel-5P, v1.0, 0.125-degree grids. Read from the progrss vault (table city_no2), which loads the TEMIS grid files itself: city value = area- and overlap-weighted mean of valid cells within 25 km of the city centre (Khartoum 15.63N 32.50E, 16 cells), stored when valid cells cover at least 80% of the circle; every month charted has 100% valid cover. Unit: 10^13 molecules per cm² (210 = 2.1 × 10^15). Yearly values are the mean of 12 monthly values; only years with all 12 months qualify: 2019–2025 (2018 has May–December only; 2026 has January–September only, so neither is charted). Khartoum: 2019 210.34, 2020 189.27, 2021 210.92, 2022 198.97, 2023 157.26, 2024 117.93, 2025 128.98. Port Sudan (Sudan's Red Sea port, same method): 2019 82.38, 2020 80.42, 2021 89.10, 2022 83.73, 2023 90.80, 2024 87.73, 2025 94.19. Monthly Khartoum: April 2023 184.38, May 2023 129.15, March 2024 88.08 (lowest month, May 2018–September 2026). Derived by progrss: 128.98 ÷ 210.34 − 1 = −38.7%; 88.08 ÷ 184.38 = 0.48; Jan–Sep means 2024 118.69, 2026 160.54 (+35.3%), 2019 208.19 (2026 is 22.9% below 2019). The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began on 15 April 2023 (dated fact). Linking the drop and the 2026 rise to the war, people leaving and returning, and lower traffic and fuel use is an interpretation: satellite NO2 also varies with weather, fires and soils, and a column measure is not ground-level air quality. Processor versions (TEMIS 'TROPOMI NO2 data version overview'): the record runs on RPRO v2.4.0 to July 2022, then OFFL v2.4.0, v2.5.0, v2.6.0 (26 Nov 2023 – 8 Sep 2024, which TEMIS says to use 'with care' because of a cloud-algorithm issue), v2.7.1, v2.8.0 and v2.9.1 (from 22 Nov 2025, 'a discontinuity in the data record may be visible'). Khartoum's 2024 low and the 2026 months fall in these flagged versions; Port Sudan, same versions and method, shows no matching dip in 2024 (87.7) or step in 2026 (Jan–Sep 94.95 vs 97.61 in 2025), so the Khartoum moves are not a version artefact, but single-month values should be read with that caveat. Credit: Copyright (c) KNMI/ESA; temis.nl (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-5P data); TEMIS/KNMI gave written permission for plates and licensed chart images.
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