Impact of COVID-19 lockdown upon the air quality and surface urban heat island intensity over the United Arab Emirates

Alqasemi, Abduldaem S.; Hereher, Mohamed E.; Kaplan, Gordana; Al-Quraishi, Ayad M. Fadhil; Saibi, Hakim

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144330

Cited by 72 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…The surface UHI intensity has reduced up to 2°C (or 19.2%). ( Alqasemi et al, 2021 ) Gauteng Province of South Africa The tropospheric column density of NO 2 fell by 31% during the lockdown. LST and surface UHI exhibited a reduction up to 3.7°C and 3°C, respectively, especially in the east of Tshwane and Lesedi.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America

Parida

Bar

Kaskaoutis

et al. 2021

Sustainable Cities and Society

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The outbreak of SARS CoV-2 (COVID-19) has posed a serious threat to human beings, society, and economic activities all over the world. Worldwide rigorous containment measures for limiting the spread of the virus have several beneficial environmental implications due to decreased anthropogenic emissions and air pollutants, which provide a unique opportunity to understand and quantify the human impact on atmospheric environment. In the present study, the associated changes in Land Surface Temperature (LST), aerosol, and atmospheric water vapor content were investigated over highly COVID-19 impacted areas, namely, Europe and North America. The key findings revealed a large-scale negative standardized LST anomaly during nighttime across Europe (–0.11°C to –2.6°C), USA (–0.70°C) and Canada (–0.27°C) in March–May of the pandemic year 2020 compared to the mean of 2015–2019, which can be partly ascribed to the lockdown effect. The reduced LST was corroborated with the negative anomaly of air temperature measured at meteorological stations (i.e. –0.46°C to –0.96°C). A larger decrease in nighttime LST was also seen in urban areas (by ∼1–2°C) compared to rural landscapes, which suggests a weakness of the urban heat island effect during the lockdown period due to large decrease in absorbing aerosols and air pollutants. On the contrary, daytime LST increased over most parts of Europe due to less attenuation of solar radiation by atmospheric aerosols. Synoptic meteorological variability and several surface-related factors may mask these changes and significantly affect the variations in LST, aerosols and water vapour content. The changes in LST may be a temporary phenomenon during the lockdown but provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the effects of various forcing controlling factors in urban microclimate and a strong evidence base for potential environmental benefits through urban planning and policy implementation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America

Parida

Bar

Kaskaoutis

et al. 2021

Sustainable Cities and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The international energy market showed different fluctuations inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic situation in 2020; energy demand and oil prices plummeted in early March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the globe when governments were urged to ban travel on a national and international level [1]. The lockdown of businesses and commerce decelerated world trade, which caused a global recession in 2020, the world gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk by 4.4% [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Energy Use at the University of Almeria (Spain)

et al. 2021

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused chaos in many sectors and industries. In the energy sector, the demand has fallen drastically during the first quarter of 2020. The University of Almeria campus also declined the energy consumption in 2020, and through this study, we aimed to measure the impact of closing the campus on the energy use of its different facilities. We built our analysis based upon the dataset collected during the year 2020 and previous years; the patterns evolution through time allowed us to better understand the energy performance of each facility during this exceptional year. We rearranged the university buildings into categories, and all the categories reduced their electricity consumption share in comparison with the previous year of 2019. Furthermore, the portfolio of categories presented a wide range of ratios that varied from 56% to 98%, the library category was found to be the most influenced, and the research category was found to be the least influenced. This opened questions like why some facilities were influenced more than others? What can we do to reduce the energy use even more when the facilities are closed? The university buildings presented diverse structures that revealed differences in energy performance, which explained why the impact of such an event (COVID-19 pandemic) is not necessarily relevant to have equivalent variations. Nevertheless, some management deficiencies were detected, and some energy savings measures were proposed to achieve a minimum waste of energy.

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“…The strict measures related to COVID-19 had a large impact on economic activities, including energy production, industrial activities, and transportation [4,5]. As a result, the emissions of many atmospheric components were significantly reduced [6][7][8][9]. There was a 3.7% decrease in Chinese carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in the first half of 2020 related to the COVID-19 pandemic [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change of CO Concentration Due to the COVID-19 Lockdown in China Observed by Surface and Satellite Observations

et al. 2021

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The nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 reduced industrial and human activities in China. In this study, we investigate atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) concentration changes during the lockdown from observations at the surface and from two satellites (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI)). It is found that the average CO surface concentration in 2020 was close to that in 2019 before the lockdown, and became 18.7% lower as compared to 2019 during the lockdown. The spatial variation of the change in the CO surface concentration is high, with an 8–27% reduction observed for Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, and Guangzhou, and almost no change in Wuhan. The TROPOMI and IASI satellite observations show that the CO columns decreased by 2–13% during the lockdown in most regions in China. However in South China, there was an 8.8% increase in the CO columns observed by TROPOMI and a 36.7% increase observed by IASI, which is contrary to the 23% decrease in the surface CO concentration. The enhancement of the CO column in South China is strongly affected by the fire emissions transported from Southeast Asia. This study provides an insight into the impact of COVID-19 on CO concentrations both at the surface and in the columns in China, and it can be extended to evaluate other areas using the same approach.

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Impact of COVID-19 lockdown upon the air quality and surface urban heat island intensity over the United Arab Emirates

Cited by 72 publications

References 65 publications

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Energy Use at the University of Almeria (Spain)

Change of CO Concentration Due to the COVID-19 Lockdown in China Observed by Surface and Satellite Observations

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