key: cord-0883946-xyjcw05d authors: Pratap, Vineet; Tiwari, Shani; Kumar, Akhilesh; Singh, Abhay Kumar title: COVID-19 lockdown induced air pollution reduction over India: A lesson for future air pollution mitigation strategies date: 2021-11-09 journal: J Earth Syst Sci DOI: 10.1007/s12040-021-01722-y sha: 9635f338ba8c06d67d23d6ecb9fce19d7d31d03f doc_id: 883946 cord_uid: xyjcw05d Air pollution is one of the biggest problems worldwide and needs to be addressed potentially with the implementation of updated stringent policies and legislative laws. The nationwide lockdown imposed to prevent the COVID-19 outbreak, has given us a unique opportunity to understand the contribution of anthropogenic emissions to the total atmospheric pollutant burden on a global as well as regional scale. Thus, in the present study, we try to investigate the impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on common ambient air pollutants (i.e., PM(2.5), NO(2), and SO(2)) concentration over 22 cities in India using in-situ measurement under a network of Centre Pollution and Control Board (CPCB). A significant reduction in the mean mass concentration of all the studied air pollutants (i.e., PM(2.5), NO(2), and SO(2)) (nearly 10–70%) is found during different phases of lockdown which reached within the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (i.e., NAAQS). The reduction in studied air pollutants is more prominent during the first phase of lockdown (mainly NO(2)) which could be due to the complete shutdown of industrial activities. The outcome of the present study will be helpful for policymakers to design cost-effective and accurate air pollution mitigation strategies for the development of a sustainable environment. The study also suggests that well-planned short-term and periodical lockdown could be an alternative effective tool of air pollution mitigation. Air pollution is one of the most vulnerable and serious issues throughout the world during the last few decades; particularly in developing countries like China, India, and Brazil, due to the rapidly increasing trend in urbanization, industrialization as well as population and associated energy demands (Li and Lin 2015; Srivastava et al. 2017; Chen et al. 2018a, b) . It has severe impacts on air quality, atmospheric visibility reduction, human health as well as climate change (Cai et al. 2017; Chen et al. 2017 Chen et al. , 2018a . It has one of the greatest health risks today and ranked at 4th position on the cause of millions of premature death worldwide (Lelieveld et al. 2015) . Recent studies reported that nearly more than half a million premature deaths over the Indian region are associated with air pollution (Ghude et al. 2016; Chowdhury and Dey 2016) . In addition to this, Guo et al. (2017) also reported approximately one million deaths in 2015, mainly due to particulate matter pollution in India. Particulate matter (PM) is one of the major constituents of air pollution and is mainly emitted from vehicles, residential, energy, and industrial emissions Guo et al. 2019) . Recently, World Health Organization (WHO) reported that nearly 90% of the world population is exposed to polluted air due to exceeding of PM 2.5 exposure guideline (*35 lg/m 3 ) (WHO BoD 2018) . In addition to this, Indian cities continuously ranked in the top 20 most-polluted cities of the world for the past few years (Kota et al. 2018; Mukherjee and Agrawal 2018) . The spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 was initially identiBed at the beginning of December 2019 at Wuhan, China, and the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 spread rapidly worldwide resulting in a pandemic declared by the World Health Organization (WHO 2020). The COVID-19 is a virus infection having a median incubation period of nearly 5 days (Lauer et al. 2020 ) which generates a severe acute respiratory syndrome with serious clinical symptoms like fever, dry cough, dyspnea, respiratory disorders, pneumonia (Guo et al. 2019 ) and causes progressive respiratory failure and even death Sohrabi et al. 2020) . As of May 31st, 2020, outbreak of COVID-19 has infected over 6.24 million people worldwide and the death toll has reached approximately 3,79,369. Since speciBc medication and treatment for are not yet reported, the number of cases of infection is still increasing at a high rate causing serious damage to the economy and a threat to humankind (Cortegiani et al. 2020) . In India, the Brst conBrmed COVID-19 case was reported on January 30th, 2020 and now India is facing the biggest challenge with an alarmingly increasing rate of COVID-19 patients across the country which has caused situations like health emergency. As of 31st May 2020, nearly 2286 people were died due to COVID-19, while almost 190,648 people conBrmed COVID-19 positive (https://www.covid19india. org/). Thus, considering the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to control alarming increasing COVID-19 cases, the Brst nationwide lockdown had been declared for 14 hrs on March 22nd, which was followed up to 31st May 2020 in four different phases, i.e., from March 24th to April 14th 2020 (Phase-I), April 15th to 3rd May 2020 (Phase-II), May 4th to May 17th 2020 (Phase-III) and May 18th to 31st May 2020 (Phase-IV). This complete lockdown and self-quarantine measures enforce constraints to human activities resulted in the shutdown of all the industrial activities and businesses like markets, shops, tourism, hotels and restaurants, construction work, mining, and other activities as well. The transport sector was almost suspended for private and public transport. Only personnel employed in essential services like the medical sector were allowed to commute. However, the energy sector was allowed to execute with a limited number of employees as it comes under the essential services. The complete lockdown nationwide drastically reduced the air pollution in India as well as in the whole world (Bao and Zhang 2020; Chauhan and Singh 2020; Pani et al. 2020; Saadat et al. 2020; Sharma et al. 2020) . Thus, the worldwide lockdown condition provides a rare research opportunity to evaluate the impact of anthropogenic activities on air quality, greenhouse concentration along with their impacts (Saraswat and Saraswat 2020) on a global as well as regional-scale, which will be useful for policymakers for sustainable development and air quality mitigation . Thus, with the above objectives, in the present study, we analyzed the variation of most common ambient air pollutants concentration (i.e., PM 2.5 , NO 2 , SO 2 ) along with meteorological parameters (mainly relative humidity) for March, April, and May for the year 2018-2020, over 22 different cities across India. The dataset in the present study is obtained from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) (CPCB: https://app. cpcbccr.com/ccr/#/caaqm-dashboard-all/caaqmlanding/data); a network of air quality monitoring stations which is discussed in detail in the upcoming section. To investigate the impact of COVID-19 induced nationwide lockdown on air pollution reduction, air pollutants data from the 22 different cities across the country (Bgure 1) were analyzed. 3.1 Changes in mass concentration before and during the lockdown period The temporal variation of ambient pollutants, i.e., PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and SO 2 (in lg/m 3 ) from March 1st to 31st May 2020 is shown in Bgures 2-4. The Bgure clearly shows a large variation in all three studied air pollutants with a significant reduction at all the sites but more prominent over highly populated and industrialized places like megacities and urban areas (Bgures 2 and 3). The mean mass concentration of PM 2.5 was found to be in the range of 25-84 lg/m 3 before the lockdown over the studied sites which reduced up to 71% and was found to be in the range of 11-109 lg/m 3 during the different phases of lockdown. During the Brst phase of lockdown, reduction in the mean mass concentration of air pollutants is observed over all the megacities (table 1). The maximum reduction in PM 2.5 was found during the Brst two phases of lockdown; however, a sharp increase in PM 2.5 (*40%) during the end of the Brst and start of the second phases of lockdown at Delhi is mainly due to the dust storm that occurred on 14th May 2020. Earlier studies also reveal that dust storm causes enhancement in particulate matter into the atmosphere Tiwari et al. 2019 ). However, enhancement in PM 2.5 over Mumbai after the Brst phase of lockdown may be mainly due to the mass migration of workers towards the villages, which causes the dust resuspension into the atmosphere. Source apportionments study over Mumbai also suggests that road dust contributes nearly 71% of the emission load of particulate matter (https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ mumbai/road-dust-responsible-for-71-emission-loadof-pm-in-mumbai-Bnds-neeri-study-7211641/). The mean mass concentration of air pollutants at megacities, urban and suburban sites before and during different phases of lockdown are summarized in tables 1-3, respectively. Apart from this, enhancement of PM 2.5 at other locations over IGB (like Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala) during the third and fourth phases may be attributed to the wheat crop residue burning. In an earlier study, Sharma et al. (2017) also reported a significant contribution of agricultural biomass burning in total particulate matter loading over Patiala. One of the other possible reasons for slight enhancement in PM 2.5 concentrations during the third and fourth phases of lockdown over IGB sites may be associated with an increase in intense convective activity resulting in uplifting of soil dust which transported from one region to another. Earlier studies also reported a higher concentration of particulate matter during April and May months, particularly over the north Indian region (Tiwari et al. 2013 (Tiwari et al. , 2019 Yadav et al. 2014 ). In addition to this, other important air pollutants, i.e., NO 2 and SO 2 also decreased significantly (up to *93% and *76%) during the different phases of lockdown (Bgures 2-4). The most significant reduction among studied pollutants was observed for NO 2 , which is commonly known as a primary tracer for industrial activity and urban air pollution, mainly emitted from high-temperature combustion processes. The . A higher concentration of NO 2 together with NH 3 is also reported in biomass burning plumes, which enhance the sulfate formation through the aqueous phase reaction (Chen et al. 2017) . Similarly, a significant reduction in SO 2 is also observed over most of the studied sites. An enhancement in NO 2 after the Brst phase of lowdown over Gaya could be mainly attributed to biomass combustion for domestic heat production (Ozgen et al. 2021) . Similarly, a large reduction in SO 2 (up to 75%) is also observed over almost all the studied sites during the Brst phase of lockdown except Mumbai, where a significant enhancement is observed during all phases of lockdown (table 1) . The reduction in air pollutants during March to May 2020 in different phases of lockdown is tabulated in tables 1, 2, and 3 for megacities, urban and suburban sites. Apart from this, a few spikes were also observed in the mass concentration of SO 2 during the different phases of lockdown. The enhancement in SO 2 during lockdown could be due to the no-restrictions of power plants and the use of coal energy, an essential commodity during the lockdown. Since, sulfur is mostly emitted from diesel, coal, or heavy fuel oil, the transport sector can be neglected as NO 2 is not increased. Further, a comprehensive study is needed to investigate possible reasons behind the enhancement in SO 2 during the lockdown. To investigate the impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on air pollutants burden, we also compared the mean mass concentration of air pollutants in 2020 with the same period of two successive previous years, i.e., 2018 and 2019. Significant depreciation in the mean mass and concentration of ambient air pollutants, during different phases of lockdown, is found in the year 2020 as compared to 2018 and 2019 (tables 4, 5, 6) due to restricted anthropogenic activities to avoid the spread of the COVID-19. The imposed lockdown caused a drastic change in air quality standard overall studied cities as PM 2.5 concentrations at most of the places found were within the permissible limits of National Ambient Air Quality Standard (i.e., NAAQS, PM 2.5 = 60 lg/m 3 ) during 2020 except Delhi, where PM 2.5 concentrations seemed to be found near the boundary of permissible limits which is not common for the past few years. Among all the studied megacities, Delhi followed by Chennai witnessed a maximum reduction in PM 2.5 concentrations. In addition, other pollutants, i.e., NO 2 and SO 2 also showed a maximum reduction at Delhi due to complete lockdown with no trafBc and industrial activities. Ahmedabad (74%), while the minimum was at Agra (26%) and Nagpur (52%). However, the mean mass concentration of SO 2 was shown (both enhancement and reduction) during 2020 as compared to the previous years, which could be due to the continuous operation of coal-based power plants under essential services and needs to be studied further in detail. The mean mass concentration of air pollutants during a different phase of lockdown in the year 2018, 2019, 2020 along with percentages is summarised in tables 5 (for urban sites) and 6 (for suburban sites). Additionally, in the suburban category, Gaya and Gurugram were sought to be most beneBcial in the context of PM 2.5 concentrations where it reduced to more than twice as compared to previous years while in terms of gaseous pollutants (NO 2 , SO 2 ) maximum reduction observed at Patiala followed by Muzaffarpur (table 6) . Recently, Sharma et al. (2020) conducted a study over different stations of India and observed an overall reduction of 43% and 31% in PM 2.5 and PM 10 mass concentrations, respectively as compared to the same period of the past 4 years. Srivastava et al. (2020) have also found similar results, i.e., a substantial improvement in ambient air quality over two capital cities (Delhi and Lucknow). A similar trend was observed in three metro cities (Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai) of the country (Jain et al. 2020; Sharma et al. 2020) . Kumar (2020) reported that during the lockdown period in India, aerosols and NO 2 reduced sharply with a maximum drop of about 60 and 45%, respectively. Jain et al. (2020) also reported *41% and 14% decline in PM 2.5 levels over Delhi and Chennai, respectively, during the lockdown period as compared to the pre-lockdown period. Wang et al. (2020) in a recent analysis of PM 2.5 over Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan cities during the lockdown period reported significant improvement in air quality as a result of reduced industrial activities and lesser public transport and use of personal vehicles. Xu et al. (2020) conducted a study over three cities of China during the lockdown and reported a decline in the levels of pollutants like PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 , CO, and NO 2 . In another study, Nakada and Urban (2020) also reported reduced concentrations of NO, NO 2 , and CO, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil during the partial lockdown in February to April 2020 in comparison to the Bve-year (2015-2020) average of the same months. Similarly, decline in air pollution has been reported by many researchers all over the world. For example, Tob ıas et al. (2020) reported improved air quality during the lockdown in Barcelona using the Copernicus tropospheric monitoring service data. They have reported a reduction of 31% in particulate matter and also a 51% reduction in NO 2 during the lockdown period as compared to previous months. Similarly, Zambrano-Monserrate et al. (2020) also assessed the air quality over China and observed 20-30% reduction in February 2020 as compared to the same timeline of past 3 years. In an important study conducted over important cities of the world, Chauhan and Singh (2020) have observed improved air quality in respect of PM 2.5 concentrations. Thus, a comparative phase-wise air pollutant reduction, discussed in an earlier section indicates that lockdown improved air quality at all the study sites, providing us baseline statistics for these pollutants, which may be further useful for policymakers to deBne new goals to achieve a clean and sustainable environment. However, a strong possibility of enhancement in air pollution concentration after the uplifting of lockdown will again reduce the air quality. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) poses a serious threat to the economy of the world and human health as well. To control the spread of this pandemic, the Government of India imposed a lockdown in the entire country in different phases and state governments also started acting collaboratively to gripple with this unprecedented crisis. Due to this complete lockdown, a huge economic loss is reported worldwide, and recently, the Government of India declared a negative growth rate (i.e., -23.9%) of gross domestic product (GDP), which is mainly attributed to the restriction of almost all the anthropogenic activities during the lockdown. As a positive consequence of lockdown, various places in India showed a significant improvement in their air quality which is reCected from various research works done dealing with air quality improvement in the lockdown period. But this may not be the permanent solution as it has rather more negative eAects on our economy. Thus, in the present scenario, Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, India should come up with some scientiBc approach through which air quality at highly populated Table 5 . Mean mass concentration of PM 2.5 , NO 2 and SO 2 over megacities during different phases of lockdown period in 2018, 2019, 2020 and respective percentage change in 2020. Mean value of pollutants 2018 2019 2020 I II III IV I II III IV I II III and fast-growing cities should be sustainable and achievable. Municipalities have been involved in implementing mitigation strategies. Several nations are implementing municipal climate mitigation policies to deal with the growing urban trafBc as well as with the energy sector. Climate change adaptation and mitigation could be seen as complementary and thus, the scientiBc community has thought of merging these two aspects which could be jointly called as 'adaptation institutionalisation' (G€ opfert et al. 2019) . However, there is lack of systematic approach to envisioning this joint institutionalisation of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Thus a model of three-dimensional cities has been proposed, according to which star-shaped cities could serve as a better approach to climate mitigation than radially symmetric cities (Pierer and Creutzig 2019) . In India also, several air pollution mitigation policies and legislative laws are implemented to achieve ''National Clean Air Program (NCAP)'' goal. For example, successful implementation of the latest policies for the power sector (MoEFCC 2015) will reduce total national SO 2 emission by 50% in 2030, while the introduction of BS-VI in 2020 for new ''all on-road vehicle categories'' followed by for non-road machinery (for example, agricultural tractors, industrial and forestry machinery, etc.) in 2024 will also help in the reduction of air pollutant from the transport sectors (MoRTH 2016). In addition, the Government of India also launched several schemes to reduce the PM 2.5 emissions from the residential sectors. For example, in 2016, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched under which nearly 80 million Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections to Below Poverty Line (BPL) households are targetted (Sankhyayan and Dasgupta 2018) . Therefore, the current situation provides us a rare opportunity to capture baseline data for various environmental metrics which could be very useful for the policymakers to build sustainable models. The closure of industrial and commercial establishments and shutdown of trafBc seen during the lockdown, can perhaps also be used at times of extremely poor air quality situations; however, I II III IV I II III IV I II IIII IV I II III IV I II III partial lockdown in stages could be incorporated as an emergency action plan which comes into action when AQI (Air Quality Index) is severe/ poor/moderate for a short duration (for example, Haze episode during winters in Delhi). Reductions in NO 2 and SO 2 from trafBc and manufacturing sectors have long been considered as the normal protocol in implementing regulatory policies. The recent results showed that such a protocol achieves only limited eAects on PM, NO 2 , and SO 2 , and other air pollutant levels, without simultaneous emission controls from big power plants and heavy manufacturing and chemical industry (Le et al. 2020) . Therefore, it is suggested to make a more comprehensive regulation of precursor gases from all possible sectors when developing an emission control strategy. In addition, like COVID-19, we need to communicate with people using a separate portal to share pollution levels, the actions taken, and health precautions/advisory for the vulnerable people in society on a large scale. There is also a need for social awareness and behavioural shifts in local people with a focus on sustainable means such as the use of public transportation, cleaner fuels, abiding by regulations, and reduced stubble burning. In our study, we have examined the most common ambient air pollutants concentration over 22 cities across the whole country distinguished by three different categories, i.e., megacity, urban and suburban, during and before the lockdown period imposed due to COVID-19 outbreak. At all the places, there is a significant reduction in levels of air pollutants (PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and SO 2 ) and at most of the sites, air pollutants concentration is found within the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (i.e., NAAQS). All the cities included in the study boast of a significant reduction in PM 2.5 levels ranging from 10% to 70% during 2020 as well as up to 72% compared to the previous two years. In addition, a significant reduction in gaseous pollutants (NO 2 and SO 2 ) was also found during the different phases of lockdown; however, enhancement (particularly highly industrialized sites or sites in IGB) was found during the second phase of lockdown onwards. In general, the whole country has witnessed slashed air pollution due to imposed lockdown but the situation could be reversed due to the uplifting of lockdown similar to the prelockdown phase with an increased level of pollutants. 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WHO 2020 Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report-51 Impact of the COVID-19 event on air quality in Central China Temporal variation of particulate matter (PM) and potential sources at an urban site of Udaipur in western India The authors are thankful to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India for providing the PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and SO 2 data freely. One of the authors, Vineet Pratap is thankful to UGC for providing Bnancial assistance in the form of fellowship. Dr Shani Tiwari is also thankful to the Director, CSIR -National Institute of Oceanography and Head, Geological Oceanography Division for his constant encouragement and support during this study. The work is partially supported by ISRO, Bangaluru under ISRO-SSPS to BHU and partially by Institution of Eminence (IoE) to BHU. We are thankful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments/suggestions, which helped in improving this manuscript. The NIO contribution number is 6762. Vineet Pratap: Writing -Original draft and software. Shani Tiwari: Methodology, conceptualization, data curation, supervision, and reviewing and editing. Akhilesh Kumar: Visualization and plotting. Abhay Kumar Singh: Writingreviewing, supervision and editing.