Season, not lockdown, improved air quality during COVID-19 State of Emergency in Nigeria.

ABSTRACT: Globally, ambient air pollution claims ~9 million lives yearly, prompting researchers to investigate changes in air quality. Of special interest is the impact of COVID-19 lockdown. Many studies reported substantial improvements in air quality during lockdowns compared with pre-lockdown or as compared with baseline values. Since the lockdown period coincided with the onset of the rainy season in some tropical countries such as Nigeria, it is unclear if such improvements can be fully attributed to the lockdown. We investigate whether significant changes in air quality in Nigeria occurred primarily due to statewide COVID-19 lockdown. We applied a neural network approach to derive monthly average ground-level fine aerosol optical depth (AOD_f) across Nigeria from year 2001-2020, usin

SUBMITTER: Etchie TO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7825968 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature