Trends of CO and NO2 Pollutants Change in Iran during Covid-19 Pandemic using Time-Series Sentinel-5 Images in Google Earth Engine

Abstract

The end of the Persian year (March 2020) coincided with its global pandemic, which led to quarantine and lockdown in Iran. Many studies have shown that with the spread of this disease and the decline of industrial activities, environmental pollutants were drastically reduced. Among these pollutants, Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) are widely caused by anthropogenic and industrial activities. In this study, the changes of these pollutants in Iran and its four metropolises (i.e., Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Tabriz) in three time periods from March 11 to April 8 of 2019, 2020, and 2021 were investigated. To this end, time-series of the Sentinel-5P TROPOMI and in-situ data within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform were employed. It was observed that the results obtained from the satellite data were in agreement with the in-situ data (average correlation coefficient =0.7). Moreover, the concentration of NO 2 and CO pollutants in 2020 was 5% lower than in 2019, indicating the observance of quarantine rules as well as people’s initial fear of the Coronavirus. Contrarily, these pollutants in 2021 were higher than those in 2020 by 5%, which could be due to high vehicle traffic and the lack of serious policy by the government to ban urban and interurban traffic. Furthermore, the increase of these pollutants in 2021 was followed by an increase in the deaths caused by Covid-19 and triggering the fourth peak in the Covid-19 cases, signifying a link between exposure to air pollution and Covid-19 mortality in Iran.