The Lock-Down Effects of COVID-19 on the Air Pollution Indices in Iran and Its Neighbors

Abstract

IntroductionThe Covid-19 restrictions have a lot of various peripheral negative and positive effects like economic shocks and decreasing air pollution, respectively. Many studies showed NO2 reduction in most parts of the world. MethodIran and its land and maritime neighbors have about 7.4% of the world population and 6.3% and 5.8% of World COVID-19 cases and deaths, respectively. The air pollution indices of them such as CH4 (Methane), CO_1 (CO), H2O (Water), HCHO (Tropospheric Atmospheric Formaldehyde), NO2 (Nitrogen oxides), O3 (ozone), SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide), UVAI_AAI (UV Aerosol Index (UVAI) / Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI)) are studied from the First quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2021 with Copernicus Sentinel 5 Precursor (S5P) satellite dataset from Google Earth Engine. The outliers are detected based on the depth functions. We use a two-sample t-test, Wilcoxon test, and interval-wise testing for functional data to control the family-wise error rate.ResultThe adjusted p-value comparison between Q2 of 2019 and Q2 of 2020 in NO2 for almost all countries is statistically significant except Iraq, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. But the CO and HCHO are not statistically significant in any country. Although CH4, O3, and UVAI_AAI are statistically significant for some countries. In the Q2 comparison for NO2 between 2020 and 2021, only Iran, Armenia, Turkey, UAE, and Saudi Arabia are statistically significant. But Ch4 is statistically significant for all countries except Azerbaijan.ConclusionThe comparison with and without adjusted p-values declares the decreases in some air pollution in these countries.