Changing air pollution scenario during COVID-19: Redefining the hotspot regions over India

Tyagi, Bhishma; Choudhury, Goutam; Vissa, Naresh Krishna; Singh, Jyotsna; Tesche, Matthias

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2020.116354

Cited by 43 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Satellite-based air quality assessments in terms of pollutant concentrations, AQI, and ER%, were done using satellite measurements in COVID-19 (April 2020) and NON-COVID (April 2019) scenarios over Haryana, situated in the Northern part of India. The selection of period was done, with the assumption, that the COVID-19 driven lockdown would have resulted in the reduction of pollutant level in the study area as reported for other parts of the world [9,14,15,18,19,25,26]. Validation showed a high correlation between satellites measured concentration of air pollutants with that of ground-based pollutants (r 2 = [ 0.5, p = 0.00).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is also reported that the areas with high air pollution levels were found to be affected more with COVID-19 and its severity [6,29]. Thus, it is the need to identify the hotspot of air pollution and take necessary actions to combat it on an urgent basis, so that the risk of COVID-19 like diseases may be reduced in the future [17][18][19]36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State of air pollutants and related health risk over Haryana India as viewed from satellite platform in COVID-19 lockdown scenario

2021

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COVID-19 driven lockdown has affected air quality worldwide. Changes in air pollutants concentration, Air Quality Index (AQI), and associated Excess Health Risk (ER%) were assessed using satellite data of before (2019), and during (2020) COVID-19 periods in the industrially, agriculturally developed and highly populated area of Haryana in the northern region of Indo-Gangetic Plains. Parameters such as Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), Particulate matters (PM), Sulphur Di-Oxide (SO 2 ), Nitrogen Di-Oxide (NO 2 ), Carbon Mono-oxide (CO), and Methane (CH 4 ) were derived using satellite data and validated using ground-based observations (n = 23). The coefficient of correlation (r) 0.91, 0.90, 0.95, 0.73, 0.81 and 0.80 were established with AOD, PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 , NO 2 and CO, respectively. Significant reduction (p \ 0.005) in the concentration of air pollutants, viz. 38% in AOD, 55% in PM 2.5 , 61% in PM 10 , 31% in SO 2 , 10% in NO 2 , 5% in CO and 1% in CH 4 were observed during lockdown. Significant (p \ 0.00) improvement in air quality was observed due to a 44% reduction in pollution level, which led to the reduction in ER% by 71%, which is quite significant. AQI and ER% from satellite and ground showed a high r 2 i.e. 0.88 and 0.99 respectively, suggesting the potential application of satellite data for periodic AQI and ER% assessment.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

State of air pollutants and related health risk over Haryana India as viewed from satellite platform in COVID-19 lockdown scenario

2021

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“… Kolluru et al ( 2021 ) Northern, Western, Central, Southern, Eastern and North-Eastern India PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 , NO 2 and O 3 Decreased air pollution during the 2020 lockdown. Five stations (Panipat, Ghaziabad, Delhi, Gurugram and Varanasi) showed consistent pollution loading Das et al ( 2021 ) Eastern, Central and Western India AOD, NO 2 , SO 2 Mann-Kendall trend analysis for AOD, NO 2 , SO 2 Higher air pollution in coal-fired power plant clusters Tyagi et al ( 2021 ) 41 cities in India NO 2 and AOD NO 2 reduction occurred in New Delhi, Delhi (old), Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Gandhinagar and Mumbai. Increase in NO 2 in the cities of Northeast India during 2020 lockdown period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Correlating the trends of COVID-19 spread and air quality during lockdowns in Tier-I and Tier-II cities of India—lessons learnt and futuristic strategies

Vasudevan¹,

Natarajan²,

Selvi³

et al. 2021

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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The present study focuses on the impact of early imposed lockdowns and following unlocking phases on the status of air quality in six Tier-I and nine Tier-II cities of India as compared to the pre-lockdown measures. Furthermore, the study highlights the possible correlation of air quality index (AQI) with the initial trend of COVID-19 issues including the vaccination cases. Based on the statistical data analysis, we observed that the long-term averages for representing the short-term pre-lockdown conditions can impose a healing effect to the observed anomalies in air pollution data. However, the reduction in air pollution during the imposed lockdown series was only a phenomenal consequence, and the trends started reversing during the later phases of partial unlocking, where the correlation showed reversing trends. Being a yearly averaged parameter, the marginal reductions in the exceedance factor (EF) alone could not dictate air quality compared to the AQI. As there is incoherent variability in the pollutant distributions among the cities during various phases of the study, the trend analysis served as a preferable criterion to choose the preferred sources of variations. Based on the results, the correlation analysis revealed that air quality expressed in terms of AQI can act as an important precursor to estimate the critical phase of COVID-19 spread and the effectiveness of various control measures taken during each phase. Based on our proposed ranking, Kolkata and Patna are ranked first in the Tier-I and Tier-II cities respectively according to their responsiveness to the various institutionalized restrictions in terms of air quality parameters.

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“…The higher values of aerosols loading and their imperative interaction between various weather and climate processes over south-east Asia are among the top priorities in the air pollution studies for the past few years to solve the regional to global scale issues [3]. Over the Indian region, the aerosol loading is high, with an identified hotspot region over the Indo-Gangetic plains [4]. These aerosols are crucial for aerosolcloud-precipitation interactions [5] and change the intensity of precipitation [6], which makes the understanding of aerosol variation more important.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results indicate that for most of the days, the PM2.5 concentrations over the study area are above the threshold values specified by CPCB. The lockdown restriction reduced the vehicular and industrial emissions to zero, but the household cooking; thermal power plants; crop residual burning, and other small-scale activities may be keeping these reduced values on the higher side over the study area [4]. Figure 4 shows the percentage change in AOD values for March, April and May months over the study region.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reviewing the Crop Residual Burning and Aerosol Variations during the COVID-19 Pandemic Hit Year 2020 over North India

et al. 2021

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The north Indian states of Haryana and Punjab are believed to be the key sources of air pollution in the National Capital Region due to massive agricultural waste burning in crop harvesting seasons. However, with the pandemic COVID-19 hitting the country, the usual practices were disrupted. COVID-19 preventive lockdown led to restricted vehicular and industrial emissions and caused the labours to leave the agricultural business in Haryana and Punjab. With the changed scenario of 2020, the present study investigates the variations in air quality over the Haryana and Punjab, and their relative impact on the air quality of Delhi. The work attempts to understand the change in agricultural waste burning during 2020 and its implication on the local air quality over both the states and the transported pollution on the national capital Delhi. The study utilises in-situ data for the year 2019–2020 with satellite observations of MODIS aqua/terra for fire counts, aerosol optical depth (AOD) and back-trajectories run by the hybrid single-particle Lagrangian integrated trajectory model (HYSPLIT).

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Changing air pollution scenario during COVID-19: Redefining the hotspot regions over India

Cited by 43 publications

References 68 publications

State of air pollutants and related health risk over Haryana India as viewed from satellite platform in COVID-19 lockdown scenario

State of air pollutants and related health risk over Haryana India as viewed from satellite platform in COVID-19 lockdown scenario

Correlating the trends of COVID-19 spread and air quality during lockdowns in Tier-I and Tier-II cities of India—lessons learnt and futuristic strategies

Reviewing the Crop Residual Burning and Aerosol Variations during the COVID-19 Pandemic Hit Year 2020 over North India

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