Impact of the first induced COVID-19 lockdown on air quality in Israel

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) induced a lockdown that has resulted in a sharp reduction in air and motor traffic and industrial activities. This in turn led to a reduction in air pollution around the world. It is important to quantify the extent of that reduction in order to estimate the weight of the impact of air and motor traffic and industrial activities over the total variation of air quality. An assessment of the extent of air pollution is aimed at facilitating the crafting of policies toward the reduction of pollution and the improvement in air quality. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on air pollution in Israel. Particularly, we focus on Haifa and Greater Tel-Aviv (Gush-Dan), two regions with high air pollution, while examining different types of air monitoring stations. The period to which we refer to is March 8, 2020, to May 2, 2020. The results reveal two main findings: (1) During the COVID-19 lockdown, pollution emissions decreased relative to the same period in 2019. The biggest reduction was observed in NO x , which, on average, was 41%. Surprisingly, ground-level ozone ( O 3 ) increased, and appeared to behave similarly to the ozone weekend effect. (2) The total percentage variation in pollution emission that was explained by the lockdown was at most 26%. By adding the meteorological conditions (which included measures of wind direction, wind speed, and temperature) as a factor in addition to the lockdown effect, this percent increased to 47%.

Increased tropospheric ozone levels as a public health issue during COVID-19 lockdown and estimation the related pulmonary diseases

“…Similar observations were reported in the conducted studies in Rio de Janeiro ( Siciliano et al, 2020 ), Hanoi ( Nguyen et al, 2022 ), Baghdad ( Hashim et al, 2021 ), Tel-Aviv ( Agami and Dayan, 2021 ), Barcelona ( Tobías et al, 2020 ), Almaty ( Kerimray et al, 2020 ), and Jiangsu ( Bhatti et al, 2021 ). When the lockdown period started, the number of emission sources, volume of road traffic, and the air pollutants (PM 2.5 and NO X ) concentrations were dropped ( Wang et al, 2021b ); dropping in NO X and VOC-limited background, resulted in higher O 3 levels ( Tobías et al, 2020 ).…”

Meteorology-normalized variations of air quality during the COVID-19 lockdown in three Chinese megacities

“…Some studies in other countries and regions also reveal the important role of meteorological conditions in air quality changes. A study of Israel showed that the total percentage change of pollution emissions explained by the lockdown was up to 26%, which increased to 47% by taking meteorological conditions as a factor in addition to the lockdown effect ( Agami and Dayan, 2021 ). In India, Mandal et al (2022) noted that adverse meteorological conditions exacerbated Delhi's air pollution situation.…”

Ambient PM2.5 and O3 pollution and health impacts in Iranian megacity

“…The cost-reduction indicates that the higher air quality has a positive association with human activity, lower traffic and the closure of factories which all causes reduce consumption of energy (Tian et al 2021 ) and provides a better air quality (Agami and Dayan 2021 ) in the different areas within the world. A comparative study on fuel consumption in Israel indicated that with extensive COVID-19 in the world, the consumption of gasoline and natural gas was reduced −22.5% and −10% respectively than the same period within 2019.…”