Temporal variation analysis, impact of COVID-19 on air pollutant concentrations, and forecasting of air pollutants over the cities of Bangalore and Delhi in India

Indian cities are highly vulnerable to atmospheric pollution in recent years, due to exponential growth in urbanisation and industrialisation, and the increased pollution has been made to focus on the temporal variation analysis and forecasting of air pollutants over major Indian cities like Delhi and Bangalore. PM(2.5) concentrations are nearly 60.5% less than the annual average value during monsoon season while 76.3% more during the winter months. Ozone concentrations increase during the summer months (~ 46.3% more than the annual average) in Delhi, whereas in Bangalore, ozone concentrations are more (~ 75% more than the annual average) during the winter months. Variations of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides are significantly less comparatively. COVID-19 lockdown has a substantial positive impact on air pollution. Air pollutant concentrations are reduced during phase I and phase II of the lockdown. Pollutants, especially NOx and PM(2.5) concentrations, are drastically reduced compared to the previous years. NOx concentrations are reduced by ~ 20% in Bangalore, whereas ~ 50% in Delhi. PM(2.5) concentrations are reduced by ~ 41% in Delhi and ~ 55% in Bangalore. Forecasting of pollutants will be helpful in providing the valuable information for the optimal air pollution control strategies. It has been observed that linear model gives better results compared to ARIMA and Exponential Smoothening models. By forecasting, the concentration of NO(2) is 115.288 µg/m(3), the ozone is 30.636 µg/m(3), SO(2) is 11.798 µg/m(3), and CO is 2.758 mg/m(3) over Delhi in 2021. All the pollutants during forecasting showed a rising trend except sulphur dioxide. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12517-022-09996-2.