Stringency of COVID-19 Containment Response Policies and Air Quality Changes: A Global Analysis across 1851 Cities

The COVID-19 containment response policies (CRPs) had a major impact on air quality (AQ). These CRPs have been time-varying and location-specific. So far, despite having numerous studies on the effect of COVID-19 lockdown on AQ, a knowledge gap remains on the association between stringency of CRPs a...

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Published in:Environmental science & technology 2022-09, Vol.56 (17), p.12086-12096
Main Authors: Zhang, Jiawei, Lim, Youn-Hee, Andersen, Zorana Jovanovic, Napolitano, George, Taghavi Shahri, Seyed Mahmood, So, Rina, Plucker, Maude, Danesh-Yazdi, Mahdieh, Cole-Hunter, Thomas, Therming Jørgensen, Jeanette, Liu, Shuo, Bergmann, Marie, Jayant Mehta, Amar, H. Mortensen, Laust, Requia, Weeberb, Lange, Theis, Loft, Steffen, Kuenzli, Nino, Schwartz, Joel, Amini, Heresh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air quality
Anthropogenic Impacts on the Atmosphere
Cities
Containment
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Meteorology
Nitrogen dioxide
Policies
Public transportation
Satellite observation
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Summary:The COVID-19 containment response policies (CRPs) had a major impact on air quality (AQ). These CRPs have been time-varying and location-specific. So far, despite having numerous studies on the effect of COVID-19 lockdown on AQ, a knowledge gap remains on the association between stringency of CRPs and AQ changes across the world, regions, nations, and cities. Here, we show that globally across 1851 cities (each more than 300 000 people) in 149 countries, after controlling for the impacts of relevant covariates (e.g., meteorology), Sentinel-5P satellite-observed nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels decreased by 4.9% (95% CI: 2.2, 7.6%) during lockdowns following stringent CRPs compared to pre-CRPs. The NO2 levels did not change significantly during moderate CRPs and even increased during mild CRPs by 2.3% (95% CI: 0.7, 4.0%), which was 6.8% (95% CI: 2.0, 12.0%) across Europe and Central Asia, possibly due to population avoidance of public transportation in favor of private transportation. Among 1768 cities implementing stringent CRPs, we observed the most NO2 reduction in more populated and polluted cities. Our results demonstrate that AQ improved when and where stringent COVID-19 CRPs were implemented, changed less under moderate CRPs, and even deteriorated under mild CRPs. These changes were location-, region-, and CRP-specific.
ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851
DOI:10.1021/acs.est.2c04303