The Response in Air Quality to the Reduction of Chinese Economic Activities During the COVID‐19 Outbreak

By Xiaoqing Shi, G. Brasseur. Geophysical Research Letters, 2020

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During the COVID‐19 outbreak that took place in early 2020, the economic activities in China were drastically reduced and accompanied by a strong reduction in the emission of primary air pollutants. On the basis of measurements made at the monitoring stations operated by the China National Environmental Monitoring Center, we quantify the reduction in surface PM2.5, NO2, CO, and SO2 concentrations in northern China during the lockdown, which started on 23 January 2020. We find that, on the average, the levels of surface PM2.5 and NO2 have decreased by approximately 35% and 60%, respectively, between the period 1 and 22 January 2020 and the period 23 January and 29 February 2020. At the same time, the mean ozone concentration has increased by a factor 1.5–2. In urban area of Wuhan, where drastic measures were adopted to limit the spread of the coronavirus, similar changes in the concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, and ozone are found.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f92bb459a40dcf730d0f28f5290d7bf4d270a245

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In Environmental Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Ground-level ozone pollution in China: a synthesis of recent findings on influencing factors and impacts (2022, background): “[123] Shi X and Brasseur G P 2020 The response in air quality to”
Enhanced secondary pollution offset reduction of primary emissions during COVID-19 lockdown in China (2020, methodology): “For example, the TROPOMI instrument on the Sentinel 5P satellite observed approximately 65% decrease in tropospheric NO2 columns over the eastern China region compared to the same period in 2019 [3,5,6].”