A study on variation of atmospheric pollutants over Bhubaneswar during imposition of nationwide lockdown in India for th
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A study on variation of atmospheric pollutants over Bhubaneswar during imposition of nationwide lockdown in India for the COVID-19 pandemic Subhasmita Panda 1,2 & Chinmay Mallik 3 & Jyotishree Nath 1 & Trupti Das 1,2 & Boopathy Ramasamy 1 Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The nationwide lockdown in India to flatten the pandemic COVID-19 curve has resulted in the reduction of anthropogenic emission sources to a great extent. This study reports change in air quality and its impact on the environment during the unique lockdown scenario at Bhubaneswar, a coastal smart city in east India. The urban air shows a remarkable reduction in the mean pollutant levels influenced by traffic emission viz. NOx (~ 67 %) and BC (~ 47 %) during lockdown over the pre-lockdown. Comparatively, a lower reduction of CO (~ 14 %) is attributed to the dominance of natural atmospheric chemical regulation and biogenic sources in addition to anthropogenic contributions. In addition to the lockdown, frequent rain events due to depression in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) also had a significant role in the reduction of the primary pollutants over the study site. An enhancement of secondary pollutant viz. O3 (~ 3%) with a distinct diurnal pattern was observed during the first phase of lockdown over the pre-lockdown period. An anti-correlation between O3 and NOx during pre-lockdown points to a higher O3 production potential with decreasing NOx. While a reduction in the titration of O3 due to suppression of fresh NO emissions led to accumulation of O3 in the first phase of lockdown, inhibited photochemistry due to cloudy skies as well as reduction in precursors led to lower O3 values during the later phases of lockdown. Keywords Lockdown . Air quality . CO . NOx . BC . O3
Introduction The spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was initially identified in Wuhan city of China, in early December 2019, and then was successively transmitted across the world with 4 million cases in the first 4 months. While the first case of the COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed on 31 January 2020 in Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-020-00916-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Boopathy Ramasamy [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Environment & Sustainability Department, CSIR-Institute of Minerals & Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT), Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751013, India
2
Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), CSIR-Institute of Minerals & Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT), Bhubaneswar, India
3
School of Earth Sciences, Department of Atmospheric Science, Central University of Rajasthan, Rajasthan, India
India, it was detected on 16 March 2020 in Odisha, an eastern coastal state in India. The country saw a sudden jump in COVID-19 cases during mid of March (https://www.mohfw. gov.in/). In order to stem the spread of novel coronavirus, the Indian government called for a 14-h voluntary public curfe
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