A132-11
Impacts of COVID-19 Control Measures on Tropospheric NO2 over China, South Korea and Italy

Friday, 11 December 2020: 16:30
Virtual
Jiaqi Chen1, Zhe Jiang1, Kazuyuki Miyazaki2, Rui Zhu1, Xiaokang Chen1, Liao Chenggong3, Dylan B. A. Jones4, Kevin W Bowman2 and Takashi Sekiya5, (1)University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, (2)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)Department of Oncology, Tangdu Hospital, Cancer Institute, Fourth Military Medical University, Xian, Shannxi, China, Xian, China, (4)University of Toronto, Department of Physics, Toronto, ON, Canada, (5)Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan
Abstract:
Tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations are strongly affected by anthropogenic activities. Using space-based measurements of tropospheric NO2, here we investigate the responses of tropospheric NO2 to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) over China, South Korea, and Italy. We find marked reductions of tropospheric NO2 columns due to the COVID-19 controls by more than 40% over E. China, South Korea, and N. Italy. The 40% reductions of tropospheric NO2 are coincident with intensive lockdown events as well as up to 20% reductions in anthropogenic nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions. The perturbations in tropospheric NO2 diminished accompanied with the mitigation of COVID-19 pandemic, and finally disappeared within around 50-70 days after the starts of control measures over all three nations.In addition, our analysis demonstrates noticeable influences from meteorological variabilities on the observed tropospheric NO2: about 20-30% in tropospheric NO2 columns and 15-30% in the derived anthropogenic NOx emission estimates. This work exhibits significant impacts of lockdown measures on atmospheric environment, highlighting the importance to understand the meteorological variabilities to explain the observed tropospheric NO2 changes.
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