Increased ozone pollution alongside reduced nitrogen dioxide concentrations during Vienna's first COVID-19 lockdown: Significance for air quality management.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic have offered a real-world opportunity to better understand air quality responses to previously unseen anthropogenic emission reductions.

Methods and main objective

This work examines the impact of Vienna's first lockdown on ground-level concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), ozone (O₃) and total oxidant (O_x). The analysis runs over January to September 2020 and considers business as usual scenarios created with machine learning models to provide a baseline for robustly diagnosing lockdown-related air quality changes. Models were also developed to normalise the air pollutant time series, enabling facilitated intervention assessment.

Core findings

NO₂ concentrations were on av

SUBMITTER: Brancher M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9757913 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature