Isolating the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on urban air quality in Canada

We have investigated the impact of reduced emissions due to COVID-19 lockdown measures in spring 2020 on air quality in Canada’s four largest cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary. Observed daily concentrations of NO(2), PM(2.5), and O(3) during a “pre-lockdown” period (15 February–14 March 2020) and a “lockdown” period (22 March–2 May 2020), when lockdown measures were in full force everywhere in Canada, were compared to the same periods in the previous decade (2010–2019). Higher-than-usual seasonal declines in mean daily NO(2) were observed for the pre-lockdown to lockdown periods in 2020. For PM(2.5), Montreal was the only city with a higher-than-usual seasonal decline, whereas for O(3) all four cities remained within the previous decadal range. In order to isolate the impact of lockdown-related emission changes from other factors such as seasonal changes in meteorology and emissions and meteorological variability, two emission scenarios were performed with the GEM-MACH air quality model. The first was a Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario with baseline emissions and the second was a more realistic simulation with estimated COVID-19 lockdown emissions. NO(2) surface concentrations for the COVID-19 emission scenario decreased by 31 to 34% on average relative to the BAU scenario in the four metropolitan areas. Lower decreases ranging from 6 to 17% were predicted for PM(2.5). O(3) surface concentrations, on the other hand, showed increases up to a maximum of 21% close to city centers versus slight decreases over the suburbs, but O(x) (odd oxygen), like NO(2) and PM(2.5), decreased as expected over these cities. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11869-021-01039-1.