An assessment of aerosol optical depth over three AERONET sites in South Africa during the year 2020

It is important to notice that the world health organization (WHO) on the 11th of March 2020, declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and in response governments around the world introduced lockdowns that restricted human and traffic movements including South Africa. This pandemic resulted in a total lockdown from 26 March until 16 April 2020 in South Africa with expected decrease in atmospheric aerosols. In this present study, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over Southern Africa based on ground-based remotely sensed data derived from three AERONET sites (Durban, Skukuza and Upington) during 2020 were used to detrermine the restriction resopnse on atmospheric aerosol pollution The study used data from 2019, 2018 and 2017 as base years. The AERONET derived data was complemented with the HYSPLIT Model and NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data. The study findings show that peak increase of AOD corresponds to Angstrom exponent (AE) enhancement for two sites Durban and Skukuza during winter (JJA) while the Upington site showed a different trend where peak AOD were observed in spring (SON). The study also observed the influence of long transport airmasses particularly those originating from the Atlantic and Indian ocean moreso for the Durban and Skukuza sites (summer and autumn) thus these sites received fresh marine aerosols however this was not the case for Upington which fell under the influence of short-range inland airmasses and was likely to receive anthropogenic and dust aerosols. The major results suggest that the lockdowns did not translate into a significant decrease in AOD levels compared to previous immediate years. The results has presented restriction response of AOD over South Africa but additional analysis is required using more locations to compare results.