Regional scenario of air pollution in lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from major urban agglomerations of India

Manob Das; Arijit Das; Raju Sarkar; Sunil Saha; Papiya Mandal

doi:10.1016/j.uclim.2021.100821

Regional scenario of air pollution in lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from major urban agglomerations of India

Urban Clim. 2021 May:37:100821. doi: 10.1016/j.uclim.2021.100821. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

Authors

Manob Das¹, Arijit Das¹, Raju Sarkar², Sunil Saha¹, Papiya Mandal³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geography, University of Gour Banga, Malda 732103, West Bengal, India.
² Department of Civil Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi 110042, India.
³ Delhi Zonal Centre, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, New Delhi, India.

Abstract

Air pollution in India during COVID-19 lockdown, which imposed on 25th March to 31st May 2020, has brought a significant improvement in air quality. The present paper mainly focuses on the scenario of air pollution level (PM_2.5, PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂ and O₃) across 57 urban agglomerations (UAs) of India during lockdown. For analysis, India has been divided into six regions - Northern, Western, Central, Southern, Eastern and North-Eastern. Various spatial statistical modelling with composite air quality index (CAQI) have been utilised to examine the spatial pattern of air pollution level. The result shows that concentration of all air pollutants decreased significantly (except O₃) during lockdown. The maximum decrease is the concentration of NO₂ (40%) followed by PM_2.5 (32%), PM₁₀ (24%) and SO₂ (18%). Among 57 UA's, only five - Panipat (1.00), Ghaziabad (0.76), Delhi (0.74), Gurugram (0.72) and Varanasi (0.71) had least improvement in air pollution level considering entire lockdown period. The outcome of this study has an immense scope to understand the regional scenario of air pollution level and to implement effective strategies for environmental sustainability.

Keywords: Air quality; Covid-19; Lockdown; Million plus cities; Particulate matter; Urban agglomerations.