A066-0011
The ICOVAC project: an ESA initiative to study the impacts of COVID-19 lockdown measures on Air quality and Climate
Wednesday, 9 December 2020
Poster
Christophe Lerot1, Ronald J van der A2, Maite Bauwens1, Tobias Borsdorff3, Michael Alexander Buchwitz4, Isabelle De Smedt1, Jieying Ding2, Henk Eskes5, Kezia Lange6, Bas Mijling2, Jean-Francois Muller1, Beata Opacka1, Maximilian Reuter7, Andreas Richter6, Oliver Schneising4, Trissevgeni Stavrakou1, Nicolas Theys1, Michel Van Roozendael1 and Christian Retscher8, (1)Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium, (2)Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, Netherlands, (3)SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, Netherlands, (4)University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, (5)Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, 3730, Netherlands, (6)University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics, Bremen, Germany, (7)University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), Bremen, Germany, (8)European Space Agency (ESRIN), Frascati, Italy
Abstract:
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, many countries worldwide implemented a series of social distancing and containment measures as an attempt to limit its spread. Those measures have led to a significant slowing down of economic activities, drastic drops in road and air traffic, and strong reductions of industrial activities in non-essential sectors, which in turn affected atmospheric emissions and air quality. Several recent studies highlighted the sudden changes in NO
2 tropospheric columns measured during the local lockdown periods, while stressing the need to consider all factors at play (e.g. meteorological conditions and long-term emission trends) before drawing any conclusions regarding lockdown impacts.
The ICOVAC project (Impacts of COVID-19 lockdown measures on Air quality and Climate) is an ESA response to that problematic, and we present here an overview of its activities. The project includes both observational and modelling components. Thorough analyses of relevant satellite data products and ground-based data sets for key pollutants are realized in various regions to identify possible footprints of the lockdown measures. Various external anthropogenic activity indicators are used to support this analysis. The impact of lockdowns on air quality is assessed by the exploitation of spaceborne (TROPOMI) datasets for key reactive species such as NO2, SO2, CO and VOCs; in addition a large effort is devoted to the detection of possible changes in the small XCO2 anthropogenic signal, relevant to the determination of climatic impacts. Different models (CAMS, DECSO, MAGRITTE) provide support to the interpretation of the observations and the disentanglement of changes caused by meteorology and by actual anthropogenic emission changes. Relying on inverse modelling technique applied to the satellite observations, optimized NOx emissions can also be derived over Europe and China. Based on those optimized emissions and known CO2/NO2 emission factors, fossil-fuel CO2 emission changes will be tentatively quantified.
