Changes in stoichiometric characteristics of ambient air pollutants pre-to post-COVID-19 in China

To prevent the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreading, Chinese government takes a series of corresponding measures to restrict human mobility, including transportation lock-down and industries suspension, which significantly influenced the ambient air quality and provided vary rare time windows to assess the impacts of anthropological activities on air pollution. In this work, we divided the studied timeframe (2019/12/24–2020/2/24) into four periods and selected 88 cities from 31 representative urban agglomerations. The indicators of PM(2.5)/PM(10) and NO(2)/SO(2) were applied, for the first time, to analyze the changes in stoichiometric characteristics of ambient air pollutants pre-to post-COVID-19 in China. The results indicated that the ratios of NO(2)/SO(2) presented a responding decline, especially in YRD (−5.01), YH (−3.87), and MYR (−3.84), with the sharp reduction of traffic in post-COVID-19 periods (P3–P4: 2.34 ± 0.94 m/m) comparing with pre-COVID-19 periods (P1–P2: 4.49 ± 2.03 m/m). Whereas the ratios of PM(2.5)/PM(10) increased in P1–P3, then decreased in P4 with relatively higher levels (>0.5) in almost all urban agglomerations. Furthermore, NO(2) presented a stronger association with PM(2.5)/PM(10) variation than CO; and PM(2.5) with NO(2)/SO(2) variation than PM(10). In summary, the economic structure, lockdown measures and meteorological conditions could explain the noteworthy variations in different urban agglomerations. These results would be in great help for improving air quality in the post-epidemic periods.