Drastic Improvements in Air Quality in Ecuador during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Žalakevičiūtė, Rasa; Vasquez, Renne; Bayas, Daniel; Buenaño, Adrian; Mejía, Danilo; Zegarra, Rafael; Díaz, Valeria; Lamb, Brian

doi:10.4209/aaqr.2020.05.0254

Cited by 62 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Their results reveal that levels of polluting gases fell by about 45% after two weeks. Similar findings are reported in Thailand ( Stratoulias and Nuthammachot, 2020 ), China and Japan ( Ma and Kang, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), Ecuador ( Zalakeviciute et al, 2020 ), Iran ( Broomandi et al, 2020 ), Milan, Italy ( Collivignarelli et al, 2020 ) and Morocco ( Otmani et al, 2020 ). Siciliano et al (2020) and Zhao et al (2020) , in turn, identified noteworthy increases in ozone concentrations (O 3 ) during the measures of social distancing adopted respectively by Brazil and China.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

Casado‐Aranda

Sánchez‐Fernández

Viedma-del-Jesús

2021

Environmental Research

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The fight against COVID-19 since January 2020 has become the top priority of more than 200 countries. In order to offer solutions to eradicate this global pandemic, the scientific community has published hundreds of articles covering a wide range of areas of knowledge. With the aim of synthesizing these publications, academics are resorting to bibliometric analyses from the perspectives of the disciplines such as biology, medicine, socioeconomics and tourism. Yet no bibliometric analysis has explored the diffuse and little-known growth of COVID-19 scientific publications in the field of environmental studies. The current study is the first of this type to fill this research gap. It has resorted to SciMAT software to evaluate the main topics, authors and journals of publications on the subject of COVID-19 combined with environmental studies spanning the period between 1 December 2019 and 6 September 2020. The search yielded a collection of 440 articles published in scientific journals indexed on by Web of Science and Scopus databases. These publications can be broken down into six main themes: (i) a sharp reduction in air pollution and an improvement of the level of water pollution; (ii) the relationship of wind speed (positive), ultraviolet radiation (positive) and humidity (negative) with the rate of infections; (iii) the effect of the pandemic on the food supply chain and waste habits; (iv) wastewater monitoring offers a great potential as an early warning sign of COVID-19 transmission; (v) artificial intelligence and smart devices can be of great use in monitoring citizen mobilization; and (vi) the lessons gleaned from the pandemic that help define actions to mitigate climate change. The results of the current study therefore offer an agenda for future research and constitute a starting point for academics in the field of environmental studies to evaluate the effects of COVID-19.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

Casado‐Aranda

Sánchez‐Fernández

Viedma-del-Jesús

2021

Environmental Research

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“…The Air Quality Index (AQI) over several parts of the globe improved significantly since enforcing lockdowns. The decline in the levels of pollutants like PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, NO2, NO, and CO have been reported in many recent studies including Brazil (Nakada and Urban, 2020), Mainland China (Chen et al, 2020;Bauwens et al, 2020), Ecuador (Zalakeviciute et al, 2020), South Korea and western Europe (Bauwens et al, 2020), Iran (Broomandi et al, 2020), India (Navinya et al, 2020;Jain and Sharma 2020), Tehran (Faridi et al, 2020), Spain (Tobias et al, 2020, USA (Berman and Ebisu, 2020;Bauwens et al, 2020). Global CO2 also reduced by 17% when compared to 2019 levels (Le Quéré et al, 2020), though Safarian et al (2020) reported a 7% reduction only.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 84%

Effect of Lockdown due to COVID-19 on the Aerosol and Trace Gases Spatial Distribution over India and Adjoining Regions

Ratnam

Prasad

Raj

et al. 2021

Aerosol Air Qual. Res.

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Significant improvement in the air quality has been reported during the 'Lockdown' being implemented due to the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic in several parts of the globe. Using Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite measurements, we found a 50-60% reduction in the mean tropospheric columnar Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and planetary boundary layer Sulphur dioxide (SO2) levels over India and adjoining regions during the lockdown (25 March to 7 April 2020) compared to the pre-lockdown periods (8-21 March 2020). Similar decreases in aerosol concentrations over Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and south India during lockdown are noticed in Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements, reaching the lowest values in the satellite era. Surprisingly, aerosol concentrations increased significantly (50-70%) during lockdown over central India when compared to pre-lockdown and climatology (2001-2019). A Concentration Weighted Trajectory analysis suggests that the air masses traveling from middle-east and Africa are the potential sources for the observed high aerosol concentrations over central India. Changes in the background meteorology (decrease in wind speed and increase in water vapour) during the lockdown made these aerosols stagnant and increased their size over central India, leading to higher AOD. These results suggest that natural sources (long-range transport) dominate anthropogenic pollution sources over India and adjoining regions, at least during the dry season. This finding is important to argue against the common belief that Asian countries are the main

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“…Moreover, in China, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic slowdown has also resulted in as minimum as 25% drop in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) discharges later in January, which accounted for a total 6% drop in worldwide emissions [32]. In Quito, the capital of Ecuador, the effect of constrained human pursuits on the air quality of urban areas demonstrated substantial decreases in the intensities of PM 2.5 (-29%), CO (-38%), SO2 (-48%), and NO2 (-68%) during the first month of quarantine [27].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A piecewise linear regression was also used to establish the association in a delegate manner. The enhancement in the quality of air in the two major cities of Ecuador, Quito, and Guayaquil owing to the reduced human activities as a result of the implemented quarantine measures [27]. In Oslo, the capital city of Norway, by employing a secondary data evaluation of weather and COVID-19 surveillance data obtained from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Public Health Institute, respectively, the correlation among COVID-19 pandemic and weather was analyzed by Menebo [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A correlation study between weather and atmosphere with COVID-19 pandemic in Islamabad, Pakistan

et al. 2020

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The present research aims to investigate the association amid weather and the most recent pandemic of COVID-19 in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The source of COVID-19 surveillance data for the secondary data analysis was the Pakistan's Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination. The weather data obtained from the Pakistan Metrological Department (PMD) was exercised in this research. The components of weather include wind speed (m/s), precipitation level (mm), normal, mean, maximum, and minimum temperature (°C). For data analysis, a non-parametric correlation test was used due to the reason that normality was not satisfied. Precipitation level (r =-0.285; p =0 .022), normal temperature (r = 0.293; p = 0.019) as well as the maximum temperature (r = 0.347; p = 0.005) were very much associated with COVID-19 virus. Pollution data (showing the concentration of NO 2) of the specific region comprising the study area extracted from the Sentinel-5P satellite was also compared for the two years (2019 and 2020). Since the country will be entering to a new weather season, the conclusions may well assist the strategy and decision-makers in the deterrence of COVID-19.

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Drastic Improvements in Air Quality in Ecuador during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Cited by 62 publications

References 23 publications

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

Effect of Lockdown due to COVID-19 on the Aerosol and Trace Gases Spatial Distribution over India and Adjoining Regions

A correlation study between weather and atmosphere with COVID-19 pandemic in Islamabad, Pakistan

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