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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIX-B4-2026-195-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Improving Sentinel-5P Imagery Usability Through Machine Learning Gap-Filling</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Zhanbin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yordanov</surname>
<given-names>Vasil</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6576-2634</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Brovelli</surname>
<given-names>Maria Antonia</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Politecnico di Milano, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, Milan, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>04</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLIX-B4-2026</volume>
<fpage>195</fpage>
<lpage>202</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Zhanbin Wu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B4-2026/195/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B4-2026-195-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B4-2026/195/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B4-2026-195-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B4-2026/195/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B4-2026-195-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B4-2026/195/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B4-2026-195-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Satellite-based air quality monitoring, particularly using Sentinel-5P (S5P) TROPOMI observations of NO2 and SO2, provides high-resolution global coverage but is substantially affected by spatio-temporal data gaps. These discontinuities, caused by cloud cover, surface reflectance, viewing geometry constraints, and strict quality assurance filtering, limit the reliability of downstream applications such as emission inversion, exposure assessment, and time-series analysis. This study investigates missing data patterns and develops a robust gap-filling framework for the Po Valley (Northern Italy) over 2019&amp;ndash;2023, a region characterized by complex basin topography and frequent winter inversions that exacerbate both pollution accumulation and data loss. A statistical assessment revealed average missing rates of 45.4% for NO2 and 77.4% for SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, with strong seasonality and extreme winter sparsity (up to 93.1% missing for SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;). Missingness was strongly correlated with elevation (r &amp;asymp; &lt;em&gt;0.77 for NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, r &amp;asymp; &lt;em&gt;0.92 for SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), highlighting terrain-related influences on retrieval quality. To reconstruct missing observations, we implemented two complementary machine learning models: a LightGBM baseline and a 3D Convolutional Neural Network (3D CNN). Both models were trained on a harmonized multi-source feature stack including lagged pollutant fields, spatial neighborhood statistics, ERA5 meteorology, static geographical variables, and cyclic temporal encodings. Synthetic masking simulated realistic gap scenarios during training (2019&amp;ndash;2022), with evaluation on 2023 data. The 3D CNN outperformed LightGBM, achieving R&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; values of 0.9469 (NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) and 0.7387 (SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;), indicating strong spatio-temporal modeling capability. This framework enhances the continuity of S5P observations and supports their use for air quality analysis in data-sparse conditions.</p>
</abstract>
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