Air quality during three covid-19 lockdown phases: AQI, PM2.5 and NO2 assessment in cities with more than 1 million inhabitants

Implemented quarantine due to the ongoing novel coronavirus (agent of COVID-19) has an immense impact on human mobility and economic activities as well as on air quality. Since then, and due to the drastic reduction in pollution levels in cities across the world, a large discussion has been magnetized regarding if the lockdown is an adequate alternative counter-measure for enhancing air quality. This paper aimed at studying the Air Quality Index (AQI), PM2.5, and tropospheric NO2 levels in three lockdown phases (before, during, and after) among 21 cities around the world. Simple before/after comparison approach was carried out to capture the declining trend in air pollution levels caused by the lockdown restrictions. The results showed that the frequency distribution for NO2 is more variable than that for PM2.5, and the distribution is flatter from 2020 to the baseline 2018-2019 period. Besides, AQI, in most of the cities, has varied from high to mild pollution during the lockdown and was moderate before. Although during the lockdown, a reduction of 3 to 58% of daily NO2 concentrations was observed across the cities, an increase was detected in three cities including Abidjan (1%), Conakry (3%), and Chengdu (10%). Despite this mixed trend, the NO2 time series clearly showed the effect of the unlocking phase where the NO2 levels increased in almost all cities. Similarly, PM2.5 concentrations have increased in the post-lockdown period, with 50% of the cities reporting significant positive differences between the lock and the unlock phase. Then, the levels of PM2.5 were higher at the pre-lockdown phase than at any other time exhibiting a “U” shape. In addition, during Ramadan, it was noted that altered patterns of daily activities in some Islamic cities have a significant negative impact on air quality.