Effect of lockdown due to SARS COVID-19 on aerosol optical depth (AOD) over urban and mining regions in India

Abstract

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-COronaVIrus Diseases 2019 (SARS-COVID-19) pandemic has posed a serious threat to human health (death) and substantial economic losses across the globe. It was however presumed that extreme preventive measures of entire lockdown in India might have reduced the air pollution level and therefore decreased the aerosol optical depth (AOD). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based Multi-angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) daily AOD product was deployed to investigate the change in AOD level during lockdown phases across the Indian Territory as compared to the long-term mean AOD level (2000–2019) of the same periods. The key findings of the study revealed that AOD level over the Indian Territory is greatly reduced (~45%) during the lockdown periods as compared to the long-term mean AOD level (2000–2019). Furthermore, a noteworthy negative AOD anomaly (~6 to 37%) was observed across the four metropolitan cities in India during the entire lockdown period (25th March to 15th May 2020). However, coal mining regions of the various coalfields in India showed a positive anomaly (~+11 to 40%) during the lockdown periods due to ongoing mining operations. In a nutshell, the study results indicated a huge drop in the AOD level over Indian Territory during lockdown periods. It is expected that the pandemic can influence some policy decisions to propose air pollution control methods. Lockdown events possibly may play a crucial role as a potential solution for air pollution abatement in the future. It may not be uncommon in future when the governments may implement deliberately selective lockdowns at pollution hotspots to control the pollution level.

Significant change in air quality parameters during the year 2020 over 1st smart city of India: Bhubaneswar

“…[2,5,6,18]). We believe that continuous coal mines operation during lockdown [21] and coal-fired thermal power plants emissions in the eastern and central Indian region, where they are located in a very dense cluster, are the main reasons for not showing decrease in PM values for 2020 even during lockdown. Another contributory factor may be residential burning of coal and wood in the region due to their availability as a cheap/free source of energy [25].…”

“…The results are surprising as one expects a significant reduction in values during lockdown due to the complete stop of vehicular pollution and industries. The reason for not reducing PM values over Bhubaneswar during lockdown period may be related with the operational | https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-020-03831-7 coal-fired thermal power plants in Eastern India [23] and the non-stop operation of coal-mines in the area [21]. As the lifetime of PM is of the order of 1-2 weeks (depending on the size of PM, there is a possibility that PM emitted from these power plants and mining region will travel to the study region, and maintains the level of PM 2.5 and PM 10 , keeping PM 2.5 on the higher side as visible in Fig.…”

Review of Geospatial Technology for Infectious Disease Surveillance: Use Case on COVID-19

“…For instance, NO 2 is one of the harmful air pollutant gases which might be responsible for causing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Abbey et al 1993;Euler et al 1988), (Shin et al 2020), heart diseases (Gan et al 2012;Mann et al 2002), diabetes (Shin et al 2020), lung injuries (Bowatte et al 2017), and even death in humans, which can make them susceptible to various respiratory viruses or syndromes. In the current pandemic situation, many studies are carried out to analyse that NO 2 could be one of the responsible factors for COVID-19 fatality (Baldasano 2020;Dutheil et al 2020;Frontera et al 2020;Kumari and Toshniwal 2020;Nakada and Urban 2020;Ogen 2020;Pansini and Fornacca 2020;Ranjan et al 2020;Zoran et al 2020).…”

Reduction of Atmospheric Effects in Satellite Images During the COVID-19 Induced Lockdown

“…Due to a reduction in the atmospheric pollutants, the haze in the major cities was significantly reduced during the lockdown period. Improvement in the air quality in the major cities in China during the COVID-19 pandemic has been analysed in the paper by Guojun et al (2020).Also, improvement in the air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic has been recently analysed in the paper by Ranjana et al (2020). The atmosphere in the Indo-Gangetic plain is often contaminated with aerosols due to dense population and economic activities.…”