Impacts of nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 outbreak on air quality in Bangladesh: a spatiotemporal analysis
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Impacts of nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 outbreak on air quality in Bangladesh: a spatiotemporal analysis Md Sariful Islam 1
&
Tanmoy Roy Tusher 2,3 & Shimul Roy 3,4 & Mizanur Rahman 5
Received: 15 July 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In Bangladesh, a nationwide lockdown was imposed on 26 March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to restricted emissions, it was hypothesized that the air quality has been improved during lockdown throughout the country. The study is intended to assess the impact of nationwide lockdown measures on air quality in Bangladesh. We analyzed satellite data for four different air pollutants (NO2, SO2, CO, and O3) to assess the changes in the atmospheric concentrations of pollutants in major cities as well as across the country. In this study, the concentrations of NO2, SO2, CO, and O3 from 1 February to 30 May of the year 2019 and 2020 were analyzed. The average SO2 and NO2 concentrations were decreased by 43 and 40%, respectively, while tropospheric O3 were found to be increased with a maximum of > 7%. Among the major cities, Dhaka, Gazipur, Chattogram, and Narayanganj were found to be more influenced by the restricted emissions. In Dhaka, NO2 and SO2 concentrations were decreased approximately by 69 and 67%, respectively. Our analysis reveals that NO2 concentrations are highly correlated with the regional COVID-19 cases (r = 0.74). The study concludes that the lockdown measures significantly reduced air pollution because of reduced vehicular and industrial emissions in Bangladesh. Keywords COVID-19 . Lockdown . Air pollution . Air quality . Correlation . Bangladesh
Introduction The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is a transmissible disease, caused by the acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Lu et al. 2020; Sohrabi et al. 2020; Dong et al. 2020). It was first detected in Wuhan City, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-020-00940-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Md Sariful Islam [email protected] 1
Department of Geography, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
2
Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
3
Department of Environmental Science and Resource Management, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Tangail, Bangladesh
4
School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
5
Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
Hubei Province of China on 31 December 2019 (WHO 2020a), which is assumed to be associated with exposures in a local seafood market in Wuhan. This novel coronavirus has become a severe public health issue throughout the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus disease as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (WHO 2020b). In 6 months after the first confirmed case in Wuhan, more than 10.6 million people have
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