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Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India

The wide spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly influenced human activities around the world, providing a unique opportunity to investigate the response of air pollution to anthropogenic emission reduction. Compared with numerous studies on conventional air pollutants, atmosp...

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Autor principal: Cui, Lulu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Published by Elsevier B.V. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10098306/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37061056
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163443
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author Cui, Lulu
author_facet Cui, Lulu
author_sort Cui, Lulu
collection PubMed
description The wide spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly influenced human activities around the world, providing a unique opportunity to investigate the response of air pollution to anthropogenic emission reduction. Compared with numerous studies on conventional air pollutants, atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) that has matched sources from both anthropogenic and natural emissions has been rarely investigated. Here we assess impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on ambient NH(3) variation across India, one of the most severe NH(3) pollution region in the world. The role of meteorology in shaping emission contribution to NH(3) pollution and respective contribution of each emission source to ambient NH(3) before and after the COVID-19 outbreak were investigated using the XGBoost algorithm coupled with WRF-Chem model. Results showed that ambient NH(3) concentrations in the seven major cities (Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata and Mumbai) decreased by 2.1–53.8 % whereas in Ahmedabad increased by 20.3 % during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Obvious decrease in NH(3) in Indo-Gangetic Plain (−17.1 %) was mainly driven by favorable meteorology, whereas the slight decline in NH(3) in South India was mainly driven by epidemic-related emission control (−8.56 %). Source appointment results showed that the contribution of industrial emission (Ind) to ambient NH(3) in most megacities showed a decreasing trend (between 11 % and 26 %) during the lockdown period. However, the reduction effect was mostly compensated by increasing contributions (15–25 %) of residential emission (Res) or agricultural soil emission (Ags). Particularly, in Ahmedabad and Lucknow ambient NH(3) increased by 20.3 % and 12 % during the lockdown period, the reduction effect of Ind on ambient NH(3) (−23 % and −11 %, respectively) was absolutely compensated by enhanced contribution of Res (24 %) and Ags (12 %), respectively. Our results highlight the importance of eliminating residential and agricultural NH(3) emissions especially in North India.
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spelling pubmed-100983062023-04-13 Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India Cui, Lulu Sci Total Environ Article The wide spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly influenced human activities around the world, providing a unique opportunity to investigate the response of air pollution to anthropogenic emission reduction. Compared with numerous studies on conventional air pollutants, atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) that has matched sources from both anthropogenic and natural emissions has been rarely investigated. Here we assess impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on ambient NH(3) variation across India, one of the most severe NH(3) pollution region in the world. The role of meteorology in shaping emission contribution to NH(3) pollution and respective contribution of each emission source to ambient NH(3) before and after the COVID-19 outbreak were investigated using the XGBoost algorithm coupled with WRF-Chem model. Results showed that ambient NH(3) concentrations in the seven major cities (Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata and Mumbai) decreased by 2.1–53.8 % whereas in Ahmedabad increased by 20.3 % during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Obvious decrease in NH(3) in Indo-Gangetic Plain (−17.1 %) was mainly driven by favorable meteorology, whereas the slight decline in NH(3) in South India was mainly driven by epidemic-related emission control (−8.56 %). Source appointment results showed that the contribution of industrial emission (Ind) to ambient NH(3) in most megacities showed a decreasing trend (between 11 % and 26 %) during the lockdown period. However, the reduction effect was mostly compensated by increasing contributions (15–25 %) of residential emission (Res) or agricultural soil emission (Ags). Particularly, in Ahmedabad and Lucknow ambient NH(3) increased by 20.3 % and 12 % during the lockdown period, the reduction effect of Ind on ambient NH(3) (−23 % and −11 %, respectively) was absolutely compensated by enhanced contribution of Res (24 %) and Ags (12 %), respectively. Our results highlight the importance of eliminating residential and agricultural NH(3) emissions especially in North India. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2023-07-10 2023-04-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10098306/ /pubmed/37061056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163443 Text en © 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Cui, Lulu
Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title_full Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title_fullStr Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title_full_unstemmed Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title_short Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (NH(3)) across India
title_sort impact of covid-19 restrictions on the concentration and source apportionment of atmospheric ammonia (nh(3)) across india
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10098306/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37061056
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163443
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