A recent satellite analysis recommends that the COVID-19 lockdown is decreasing two pollutants but increasing another.
With many individuals working from house or safeguarding in location, a decrease in automobile emissions is one possibly favorable outcome of the pandemic, even if it is temporary.
The American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters just recently published two papers that take a look at the effect of lockdowns on air quality.
They reveal that, on the one hand, levels of nitrogen dioxide and particle matter contamination over China, Western Europe, and the United States have actually fallen considerably due to lockdown procedures. On the other hand, levels of surface area ozone in China have increased.
The time out in automobile emissions during the lockdown provides a rare possibility to examine the impact of driving on air quality. The only somewhat similar occasion was the reduction in China’s pollution that accompanied the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That was of much shorter period and included a considerably smaller geographical location.
Climatic researcher Jenny Stavrakou, of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels, keeps in mind: “Maybe this unintended experiment could be used to comprehend better the emission regulations. It is some positive news amongst a very terrible scenario.” Stavrakou is co-author of the paper focusing on levels of nitrogen dioxide.
The researchers behind this paper studied satellite measurements of air quality over numerous significant coronavirus epicenters: China, South Korea, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Iran, and the U.S.
Possibly since each nation had a different action to the coronavirus, the decrease in nitrogen dioxide levels varied by area.