Impacts of COVID-19 on air quality in mid-eastern China: An insight into meteorology and emissions.

ABSTRACT: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread rapidly worldwide in the first half of 2020. Stringent national lockdown policies imposed by China to prevent the spread of the virus reduced anthropogenic emissions and improved air quality. A weather research and forecasting model coupled with chemistry was applied to evaluate the impact of meteorology and emissions on air quality during the COVID-19 outbreak (from January 23 to February 29, 2020) in mid-eastern China. The results show that air pollution episodes still occurred on polluted days and accounted for 31.6%-60.5% of the total number of outbreak days in mid-eastern China from January 23 to February 29, 2020. However, anthropogenic emissions decreased significantly, indicating that anthropogenic emission reduction cannot completely offse

SUBMITTER: Zhao X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8461319 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature