Air quality assessment of Jaipur city Rajasthan after the COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

In the whole world, most of the air polluted cities were normalized during the COVID-19 lockdown but after the lockdown, the air pollution is continuously increasing day by day. In the present study, we assessed the air quality at the selected sites of Jaipur city after the COVID-19 lockdown from October 2020 to February 2021 to quantify the enhancement in air pollution. The obtained data was processed using air quality index (AQI), principal component analysis (PCA) and pearson correlation matric (PCM). The obtained data were also compared with National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Values of particulate matter (PM 10 , PM 2.5 ) were found beyond the limits of NAAQS (100 µg/m 3 , 60 µg/m 3 ) while the values of gaseous pollutant such as SO 2 , NO 2 , and CO was found below the limits of NAAQS (80 µg/m 3 , 80 µg/m 3 , 4.0 mg/m 3 ). Based on AQI, air quality of site 1 (114.80) and site 2 (110.48) was found severely polluted while air quality of site 3 (70.47) was found moderately polluted. Based on PCA, the highest loading factor was declared to PM 10 and the lowest loading factor was SO 2 . The study concludes that by adopting the control measures of particulate matter and periodical transport lockdown, air pollution can be minimised. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41324-022-00456-3.

Exploring the Influence of Human Activities and the COVID-19 Lockdown on Urban Air Quality in Rajasthan, India

“…1 and Table 1. Rajasthan's economic activities, notably in the cities of Jaipur and Jodhpur (Kumhar et al 2022;Ruhela et al 2022), have spurred growth but also raised concerns about air quality due to increased industrial processes and vehicular traffic, which emit significant levels of SO2, NO2, and particulate matter (Yadav et al 2019). Adjacent to these urban areas, agricultural practices, including crop residue burning, further deteriorate air quality, impacting urban health and necessitating comprehensive monitoring and management strategies (Nigam et al 2015;Kuldeep et al 2022b).…”

Detecting air pollutants trends using Mann-Kendall tests and Sen’s slope estimates

“…The main causes of particulate matter (PM) pollution are activities related to agriculture, road dust, power plants powered by vehicle emissions, construction activities, etc. (Kumar et al, 2018;Ruhela et al, 2022b). In general, atmospheric aerosols are dominated by crustal components in the Indian region mainly because of their origin from suspended soil-dust and road dust (Bhaskar and Sharma, 2008).…”