The Dynamics Of The Atmospheric Pollutants During The Covid-19 Pandemic 2020 And Their Relationship With Meteorological Conditions In Moscow

Abstract

The relationship between the dynamics of the atmospheric pollutants and meteorological conditions has been analyzed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Moscow in spring, 2020. The decrease in traffic emissions during the lockdown periods from March 30th until June 8th played an important role in the decrease (up to 70%) of many gaseous species and aerosol PM10 concentrations and in the increase of surface ozone (up to 18%). The analysis of the pollutant concentrations during the lockdown showed much smoother diurnal cycle for most of the species due to the reduced intensity of traffic, especially during rush hours, compared with that before and after the lockdown. The specific meteorological conditions with low temperatures during the lockdown periods as well as the observed smoke air advection have made a considerable contribution to the air quality. After removing the cases with smoke air advection the decrease in concentration of many pollutants was observed, especially in NOx and PM10. The analysis of Pearson partial correlation coefficients with fixed temperature factor has revealed a statistically significant negative correlation between the Yandex self-isolation indices (SII), which can be used as a proxy of traffic intensity, and daily concentrations of all pollutants, except surface ozone, which has a statistically significant positive correlation with SII caused by specific photochemical reactions. In situations with SII>2.5 more favorable conditions for surface ozone generation were observed due to smaller NOx and the higher O3 /NOx ratios at the same ratio of VOC/NOx. In addition, this may also happen, since during the Arctic air advection, which was often observed during the lockdown period, the growth of ozone could be observed due to the downward flux of the ozone-rich air from the higher layers of the atmosphere.

Impact of Cloud Condensation Nuclei Reduction on Cloud Characteristics and Solar Radiation during COVID-19 Lockdown 2020 in Moscow

“…A significant effect of a change in the concentrations of pollutants over Moscow was noted not only for the entire lockdown period, but also for the periods of the different type air mass advections [8].…”

“…Here, we used periods with quasi-homogeneous meteorological conditions (QHMC) in April 2018-May 2020 in the Moscow region, which were defined [8,48] taking into account observations on atmospheric pressure, the predominant winds and day-to-day variations in meteorological parameters together with conditions for the intensity of pollution dispersion (IPD) [49]. Amid the QHMC periods, we chose ones with northern advection to eliminate overestimated lockdown effects and to reduce the influence of large-scale processes on the variability in N d [50].…”

“…In Moscow, the lockdown period continued from the end of March until 9 June 2020. Restrictive measures superposed atmosphere circulation features and led to a significant reduction in emissions of pollutants, concentrations of small gas species and particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) [8][9][10].…”

Columnar and surface urban aerosol in the Moscow megacity according to measurements and simulations with the COSMO-ART model

“…During the low-temperature biomass burning process, the AAE values should be higher than 1 because of much intensive absorption at shorter wavelengths (at 440 nm in our case) by organic carbon (Kirchstetter et al, 2004;Sun et al, 2017). More details of this method can be found in Chubarova et al (2021).…”

Introduction To Geography Of Covid-19 Pandemic: Environmental Issues, Public Health And Socio-Economic Consequences

“…The impacts of the pandemic lockdown on the environment, air pollution, and water quality are considered in (Chubarova et al 2021;Sari et al 2021;Islam et al 2021;Arakelov et al 2021). The analysis of changes in concentration of different atmospheric gas and aerosol species during the COVID-19 lockdown has been made using ground-based and satellite measurements for different geographical regions: Iran (Sari et al 2021), India (Islam et al 2021) and Moscow megacity in Russia (Chubarova et al 2021).…”