[1] The relationship between black carbon (BC) and carbon monoxide (CO) has been analyzed using measurements from two sites in Mexico City and five urban areas in Germany. The correlation coefficient between BC and CO is greater than 0.90 for all sites. The average slope of the linear regression line for BC versus CO is 2.2 mg mg À1 for German sites and 1.1 mg mg À1 in Mexico City. The most important factors that affect the BC to CO relationship appear to be the ratio of diesel to gasoline usage and the combustion efficiency of vehicles in a particular area. The results of this analysis suggest that CO measurements in urban areas can be used to estimate BC mass when direct measurements are not available.

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, emissions of primary criteria pollutants in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) were substantially reduced, as in many other cities in the world. Unexpectedly, the daily average ozone concentration profile was practically indistinguishable from that of the past two years for the same time span in the calendar. So, we compared surface meteorology data, CO, NOx and O 3 hourly concentrations in the MCMA from the ozone season (from March 1 to May 31) for the years 2018, 2019, and 2020. Also, TROPOMI satellite data on column count of CO, NO 2 and HCHO, above a sparse grid of surface points in the MCMA, were also compared for March, April, and May 2020 with those from 2019. Population density used as a background variable to increase understanding of the observed differences allowed us to propose that reductions in NOx were so drastic that ozone formation moved rapidly from a VOC sensitive region towards a NOx sensitive region. The relevance of that unplanned policy provides impacts of contingent short-term emissions control actions during very high pollution episodes. Further analysis of these and other related data concerning VOC speciation and emissions patterns during the coronavirus lockdown may provide guidelines to enhance emission control policies in the post-COVID-19 times to come.

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Increasing cooperation in Mexico benefits climatologists, meteorologists, and science as a whole.

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A characterization of local wind events in Mexico City, which occurred during MILAGRO campaign, was carried out within the framework of a lattice wind modeling approach at a meso-β scale. Mexico City was modeled as a 2D lattice domain with a given number of identical cells. Local wind conditions at any cell were described by a state variable defined by the spatial averages of wind attributes such as speed, direction, divergence, and vorticity. Full and partial densities of wind states were discussed under different conditions using two simple lattice wind models. We focus on the results obtained with the 1-cell lattice wind model and provide brief comments about preliminary results obtained with the 4-cell model. The 1-cell model allowed identifying the main patterns of the wind circulation in Mexico City throughout the study period (anabatic and katabatic winds, winds induced by the urban heat island, and winds with high possibilities for exchanging pollutants between Mexico City and the neighboring settlements, among others). The model showed that Mexico City wind divergence and vorticity disclose superposed oscillations whose most important periods were 24 and 12 hours, suggesting strong connections with the diurnal cycle of incoming solar radiation and the urban heat island.