Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on air pollution levels in East Asia

This study leverages satellite remote sensing to investigate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and the resulting lockdown of public venues on air pollution levels in East Asia. We analyze data from the Sentinel-5P and the Himawari-8 satellites to examine concentrations of NO(2), HCHO, SO(2), and CO, and the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the BTH, Wuhan, Seoul, and Tokyo regions in February 2019 and February 2020. Results show that most of the concentrations of pollutants are lower than those of February 2019. Compared to other pollutants, NO(2) experienced the most significant reductions by almost 54%, 83%, 33%, and 19% decrease in BTH, Wuhan, Seoul, and Tokyo, respectively. The greatest reductions in pollutants occurred in Wuhan, with a decrease of almost 83%, 11%, 71%, and 4% in the column densities of NO(2), HCHO, SO(2), and CO, respectively, and a decrease of about 62% in the AOD. Although NO(2), CO, and formaldehyde concentrations decreased in the Seoul and Tokyo metropolitan areas compared to the previous year, concentrations of SO(2) showed an increase in these two regions due to the effect of transport from polluted upwind regions. We also show that meteorological factors were not the main reason for the dramatic reductions of pollutants in the atmosphere. Moreover, an investigation of the HCHO/NO(2) ratio shows that in many regions of East China, particularly in Wuhan, ozone production in February 2020 is less NO(X) saturated during the daytime than it was in February 2019. With large reductions in the concentrations of NO(2) during lockdown situations, we find that significant increases in surface ozone in East China from February 2019 to February 2020 are likely the result of less reaction of NO and O(3) caused by significantly reduced NO(X) concentrations and less NO(X) saturation in East China during the daytime.