Weather indicators and improving air quality in association with COVID-19 pandemic in India

Rabin Chakrabortty; Subodh Chandra Pal; Manoranjan Ghosh; Alireza Arabameri; Asish Saha; Paramita Roy; Biswajeet Pradhan; Ayan Mondal; Phuong Thao Thi Ngo; Indrajit Chowdhuri; Ali P Yunus; Mehebub Sahana; Sadhan Malik; Biswajit Das

doi:10.1007/s00500-021-06012-9

Weather indicators and improving air quality in association with COVID-19 pandemic in India

Soft comput. 2023;27(6):3367-3388. doi: 10.1007/s00500-021-06012-9. Epub 2021 Jul 13.

Authors

Rabin Chakrabortty¹, Subodh Chandra Pal¹, Manoranjan Ghosh², Alireza Arabameri³, Asish Saha¹, Paramita Roy¹, Biswajeet Pradhan^{4

5

6

7}, Ayan Mondal⁸, Phuong Thao Thi Ngo⁹, Indrajit Chowdhuri¹, Ali P Yunus¹⁰, Mehebub Sahana¹¹, Sadhan Malik¹, Biswajit Das¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan, Bardhaman, West Bengal India.
² Centre for Rural Development and Sustainable Innovative Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal India.
³ Department of Geomorphology, Tarbiat Modares University, 14117-13116 Tehran, Iran.
⁴ Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007 Australia.
⁵ Department of Energy and Mineral Resources Engineering, Sejong University, Choongmu-gwan, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, 05006 Korea.
⁶ Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80234, Jeddah, 21589 Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Earth Observation Center, Institute of Climate Change, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor Malaysia.
⁸ Ecology and Environmental Modelling Laboratory, Department of Environmental Science, The University of Burdwan, Burdwan, West Bengal India.
⁹ Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000 Vietnam.
¹⁰ Centre for Climate Change Adaptation, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Ibaraki, 305-8506 Japan.
¹¹ School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL UK.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic enforced nationwide lockdown, which has restricted human activities from March 24 to May 3, 2020, resulted in an improved air quality across India. The present research investigates the connection between COVID-19 pandemic-imposed lockdown and its relation to the present air quality in India; besides, relationship between climate variables and daily new affected cases of Coronavirus and mortality in India during the this period has also been examined. The selected seven air quality pollutant parameters (PM₁₀, PM_2.5, CO, NO₂, SO₂, NH₃, and O₃) at 223 monitoring stations and temperature recorded in New Delhi were used to investigate the spatial pattern of air quality throughout the lockdown. The results showed that the air quality has improved across the country and average temperature and maximum temperature were connected to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This outcomes indicates that there is no such relation between climatic parameters and outbreak and its associated mortality. This study will assist the policy maker, researcher, urban planner, and health expert to make suitable strategies against the spreading of COVID-19 in India and abroad.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00500-021-06012-9.

Keywords: Air quality index; Analytical neural network; COVID-19; Lockdown; Mortality.

Publication types

Retracted Publication