Enhanced secondary pollution offset reduction of primary emissions during COVID-19 lockdown in China
By Xin Huang, Aijun Ding, Jian Gao, Bo Zheng, Derong Zhou, X. Qi, Rongzhi Tang, Jiaping Wang, Chuanhua Ren, W. Nie and 16 more. National Science Review, 2020
740 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract To control the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), China imposed nationwide restrictions on the movement of its population (lockdown) after the Chinese New Year of 2020, leading to large reductions in economic activities and associated emissions. Despite such large decreases in primary pollution, there were nonetheless several periods of heavy haze pollution in eastern China, raising questions about the well-established relationship between human activities and air quality. Here, using comprehensive measurements and modeling, we show that the haze during the COVID lockdown was driven by enhancements of secondary pollution. In particular, large decreases in NOx emissions from transportation increased ozone and nighttime NO3 radical formation, and these increases in atmospheric oxidizing capacity in turn facilitated the formation of secondary particulate matter. Our results, afforded by the tragic natural experiment of the COVID-19 pandemic, indicate that haze mitigation depends upon a coordinated and balanced strategy for controlling multiple pollutants.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f298a03ea718547dc28da82b6ebc1ccfe9d2437d
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- L. Xue
- Zhaozhong Feng
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- Xiaoyu Zhang
- Zhongfei Chen
Citations in the corpus
- The Response in Air Quality to the Reduction of Chinese Economic Activities During the COVID‐19 Outbreak (2020, result): “These results are consistent with the recent findings of Huang et al. (2020) and Wang et al., (2020). In the city of Wuhan, where the commercial and industrial activity was put to a complete hold on 23 January 2020, PM2.”
- Have traffic restrictions improved air quality? A shock from COVID-19 (2020, positive): “Huang et al. (2020) found thatgiven the enhancedsecondarypollutionduring the COVID-19 epidemic, the reduction of primary emissions caused by the policies of lockdown has been offset.”
- Ground-level ozone pollution in China: a synthesis of recent findings on influencing factors and impacts (2022, background): “JJJ: Jing-Jin-Ji, i.e. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei; YRD: Yangtze River Delta; NCP: North China Plain (excluding JJJ); PRD: Pearl River Delta; SCB: Sichuan Basin; FWP: Fenwei Plain (refer to figure 6 for their geographic locations); China: papers focusing on the whole country.”