Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on typical ambient air pollutants: Cyclical response to anthropogenic emission reduction

Preliminary studies have confirmed that ambient air pollutant concentrations are significantly influenced by the COVID-19 lockdown measures, but little attention focus on the long term impacts of human countermeasures in cities all over the world during the period. Still, fewer have addressed their other essential properties, especially the cyclical response to concentration reduction. This paper aims to fill the gaps with combined methods of abrupt change test and wavelet analysis, research areas were made of five cities, Wuhan, Changchun, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu, in China. Abrupt changes in contaminant concentrations commonly occurred in the year prior to the outbreak. The lockdown has almost no effect on the short cycle below 30 d (days) for both pollutants, and a negligible impact on the cycle above 30 d. PM(2.5) (fine particulate matter) has a stable short-cycle nature, which is greatly influenced by anthropogenic emissions. The analysis revealed that the sensitivity of PM(2.5) to climate is increased along with the concentrations of PM(2.5) were decreasing by the times when above the threshold (30–50 μg m(−3)), and which could lead to PM(2.5) advancement relative to the ozone phase over a period of 60 d after the epidemic. These results suggest that the epidemic may have had an impact earlier than when it was known. And significant reductions in anthropogenic emissions have little impact on the cyclic nature of pollutants, but may alter the inter-pollutant phase differences during the study period.