Impact of COVID-19 on Extremely Polluted Air Quality and Trend Forecast in Seven Provinces and Three Cities of China

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 broke out. Because the virus is extremely contagious and the mortality rate after infection is extremely high, China and many countries in the world have imposed lockdowns. Air pollutants during the epidemic period have attracted the attention of many scholars. This research is to use predictive models to describe changes in extreme air pollutants. China is the first country in the world to enter the lockdown state. This study uses data from 2015-2020 to compare and predict the concentration of extreme pollutants before and after the lockdown. The results show that the lockdown of the epidemic will reduce the annual average concentration of PM2.5, and the annual average concentration of O3 will increase first and then decrease. Through analysis, it is concluded that there is a synergistic decrease trend between PM2.5 and O3. With the various blockade measures for epidemic prevention and control, the reduction of extreme air pollutant concentrations is sustainable. The assessment of China’s air quality in conjunction with the COVID-19 can provide scientific guidance for the Chinese government and other relevant departments to formulate policies.

Spatiotemporal Distributions of PM2.5 Concentrations in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region From 2013 to 2020

“…Overall [PM 2.5 ] in the BTH revealed a downward trend during the investigated period. Exploring the reasons for the decrease in the [PM 2.5 ] was inseparable from the national policy control, such as coal-to-gas and energy-saving transformation (Pan et al, 2021). In detail, the APPCAP implemented between 2013 and 2017 has successfully reduced [PM 2.5 ] (Yue et al, 2020), and the sharp decline in 2017 was closely related to the termination year of the APPCAP in 2017.…”