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Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes

This paper analyses the impact of the control measures during the COVID-19 lockdown in Europe (15 March–30 April 2020) on 1-h daily maximum nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) and maximum daily 8-h running average ozone (MDA8 O(3)) observations obtained from the European Environment Agency's air quality d...

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Autores principales: Ordóñez, Carlos, Garrido-Perez, Jose M., García-Herrera, Ricardo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7385987/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32781318
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141322
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author Ordóñez, Carlos
Garrido-Perez, Jose M.
García-Herrera, Ricardo
author_facet Ordóñez, Carlos
Garrido-Perez, Jose M.
García-Herrera, Ricardo
author_sort Ordóñez, Carlos
collection PubMed
description This paper analyses the impact of the control measures during the COVID-19 lockdown in Europe (15 March–30 April 2020) on 1-h daily maximum nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) and maximum daily 8-h running average ozone (MDA8 O(3)) observations obtained from the European Environment Agency's air quality database (AirBase). Daily maximum NO(2) decreased consistently over the whole continent, with relative reductions ranging from 5% to 55% with respect to the same period in 2015–2019 for 80% of the sites considered (10th – 90th percentiles). However, MDA8 O(3) concentrations showed a different pattern, decreasing over Iberia and increasing elsewhere. In particular, a large region from northwestern to central Europe experienced increases of 10–22% at urban background stations, reaching typical values of the summer season. The analysis of the expected NO(2) and O(3) concentrations in the absence of the lockdown, using generalised additive models fed by reanalysis meteorological data, shows that the low NO(2) concentrations were mostly attributed to the emission reductions while O(3) anomalies were dominated by the meteorology. The relevance of each meteorological variable depends on the location. The positive O(3) anomalies in northwestern and central Europe were mostly associated with elevated temperatures, low specific humidity and enhanced solar radiation. This pattern could be an analogue to study the limits of pollution control policies under climate change scenarios. On the other hand, the O(3) reduction in Iberia is mostly attributable to the low solar radiation and high specific humidity, although the reduced zonal wind also played a role in the proximity of the Iberian Mediterranean coast.
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spelling pubmed-73859872020-07-29 Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes Ordóñez, Carlos Garrido-Perez, Jose M. García-Herrera, Ricardo Sci Total Environ Article This paper analyses the impact of the control measures during the COVID-19 lockdown in Europe (15 March–30 April 2020) on 1-h daily maximum nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) and maximum daily 8-h running average ozone (MDA8 O(3)) observations obtained from the European Environment Agency's air quality database (AirBase). Daily maximum NO(2) decreased consistently over the whole continent, with relative reductions ranging from 5% to 55% with respect to the same period in 2015–2019 for 80% of the sites considered (10th – 90th percentiles). However, MDA8 O(3) concentrations showed a different pattern, decreasing over Iberia and increasing elsewhere. In particular, a large region from northwestern to central Europe experienced increases of 10–22% at urban background stations, reaching typical values of the summer season. The analysis of the expected NO(2) and O(3) concentrations in the absence of the lockdown, using generalised additive models fed by reanalysis meteorological data, shows that the low NO(2) concentrations were mostly attributed to the emission reductions while O(3) anomalies were dominated by the meteorology. The relevance of each meteorological variable depends on the location. The positive O(3) anomalies in northwestern and central Europe were mostly associated with elevated temperatures, low specific humidity and enhanced solar radiation. This pattern could be an analogue to study the limits of pollution control policies under climate change scenarios. On the other hand, the O(3) reduction in Iberia is mostly attributable to the low solar radiation and high specific humidity, although the reduced zonal wind also played a role in the proximity of the Iberian Mediterranean coast. Elsevier B.V. 2020-12-10 2020-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7385987/ /pubmed/32781318 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141322 Text en © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 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
Ordóñez, Carlos
Garrido-Perez, Jose M.
García-Herrera, Ricardo
Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title_full Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title_fullStr Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title_full_unstemmed Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title_short Early spring near-surface ozone in Europe during the COVID-19 shutdown: Meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
title_sort early spring near-surface ozone in europe during the covid-19 shutdown: meteorological effects outweigh emission changes
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7385987/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32781318
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141322
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