A025-09
Global Model Simulations of the Effects of COVID-19 on the Level of Primary and Secondary Air Pollutants

Monday, 7 December 2020: 19:26
Virtual
Simone Tilmes1, Benjamin Gaubert2, Idir Bouarar3, Sabine Darras4, Thierno Doumbia5, Nellie Elguindi5, Claire Granier5, Trissevgeni Stavrakou6, Jean-francois Muller7, Yiming Liu8, Xiaoqin Shi3, Tao Wang9, Guy P Brasseur10 and Maite Bauwens6, (1)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry, Observations, and Modeling Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, (4)Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, Toulouse, France, (5)Laboratoire d'Aérologie - Observatoire Midi Pyrénées, Toulouse, France, (6)Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium, (7)Belgisch Instituut voor Ruimte-Aeronomie, Brussel, Belgium, (8)Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, (9)Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, (10)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
With the reduction in the economic activity associated with the COVID-19 pandemics, the emissions of a number of air pollutants have been substantially reduced in different parts of the world. We use a global chemistry-climate model (Community Earth System Model, CESM2) to assess the consequences of the pandemics on air pollution at the global scale and in particular, the changes in the concentration of secondary pollutants such as ozone and atmospheric aerosols. We also assess the perturbation in the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere.

The model is nudged to analyzed meteorology and by information on the reduction of traffic, industrial activity, energy production, etc. during the pandemics. Evaluations of the simulated fields of chemical species in 2019 (a year before the pandemics) and 2020 (during the pandemics) involves the analysis of space observations and of surface data from monitoring stations.

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