Nitrogen dioxide decline and rebound observed by GOME-2 and TROPOMI during COVID-19 pandemic

Since its first confirmed case in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a worldwide pandemic with more than 90 million confirmed cases by January 2021. Countries around the world have enforced lockdown measures to prevent the spread of the virus, introducing a temporal change of air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) that are strongly related to transportation, industry, and energy. In this study, NO(2) variations over regions with strong responses to COVID-19 are analysed using datasets from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) sensor aboard the EUMETSAT Metop satellites and TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard the EU/ESA Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. The global GOME-2 and TROPOMI NO(2) datasets are generated at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) using harmonized retrieval algorithms; potential influences of the long-term trend and seasonal cycle, as well as the short-term meteorological variation, are taken into account statistically. We present the application of the GOME-2 data to analyze the lockdown-related NO(2) variations for morning conditions. Consistent NO(2) variations are observed for the GOME-2 measurements and the early afternoon TROPOMI data: regions with strong social responses to COVID-19 in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America show strong NO(2) reductions of [Formula: see text] 30–50% on average due to restriction of social and economic activities, followed by a gradual rebound with lifted restriction measures. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11869-021-01046-2.