The impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on the changes of air quality and land surface temperature in Kolkata city, Indi
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The impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on the changes of air quality and land surface temperature in Kolkata city, India Nemai Sahani1
•
Sudipto Kumar Goswami2 • Arghya Saha3
Received: 13 July 2020 / Revised: 29 October 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 Korean Spatial Information Society 2020
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown reduced the pollution level in the major megacities worldwide. The air pollution level of the city directly influences the air temperature and also land surface temperature (LST). In this paper, authors analyzed the impact of lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic on the pollution level of the city and resulted LST. Single channel algorithm has been used to retrieve LST from Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite data. Pre-lockdown and postlockdown satellite data has been used to show the changes in LST due to lockdown. The air quality index of prelockdown and post-lockdown period of the city estimated based on seven pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10, NO2, NH3, SO2, CO and Ozone. The pollution level of the city and LST significantly decreased after lockdown is enforced. The pollution level of the major portion of the city before lockdown is moderately polluted (95–153 lm) and after lockdown the satisfactory level of pollution level observed (33–45 lm). The mean LST before lockdown is 28.76 C (13 March, 2020) and it decreased down to 26.56 C after lockdown (30 April, 2020). There is a sharp decrease of low value of LST observed (23.6–17.35 C) in the city. & Nemai Sahani [email protected] Sudipto Kumar Goswami [email protected] Arghya Saha [email protected] 1
Independent Researcher, Bolpur, West Bengal, India
2
Department of Geography, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
3
Department of Geography, Bidhan Chandra College, University of Calcutta, Rishra, India
Keywords COVID-19 Lockdown Kolkata city Land surface temperature Air quality index
1 Introduction The increase of pollution level in the city and pollution induced local climate change is became an important issue for the municipal authorities. At that time, individual cities and transnational municipal networks started to take actions for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants [1]. The release of atmospheric pollution and rapid urbanization alter the heat balance of the earth surface and atmosphere. The increase of atmospheric pollution level in the city raised the temperature in both atmosphere and surface and this leads towards urban climate change. National governments and the emerging international regime for governing urban pollution and climate change showed little attention in these activities at that stage [2]. At first, municipal action on climate change was seen in a few pioneer cities, predominantly in North America and Europe, focusing on the challenge of climate change mitigation [3, 4]. Later the number of transnational municipal networks have grown and multiplied and more number of cities have become involved in addressing this issue. The earl
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