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Early observations on the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on air quality trends across the UK.

ABSTRACT: UK government implemented national lockdown in response to COVID-19 on the 23-26 March 2020. As elsewhere in Europe and Internationally, associated restrictions initially limited individual mobility and workplace activity to essential services and travel, and significant air quality benefits were widely anticipated. Here, break-point/segment methods are applied to air pollutant time-series from the first half of 2020 to provide an independent estimate of the timings of discrete changes in NO, NO₂, NO_x, O₃, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 time-series from Automatic Urban Rural Network (AURN) monitoring stations across the UK. NO, NO₂ and NO_x all exhibit abrupt decreases at the time the UK locked down of (on average) 7.6 to 17 μg·m^-3 (or 32 to 50%) at Urban Traffic stations and 4 to 5.7 μg·m^-3 (or 26 to 46%) at Urban Background stations. However, after the initial abrupt reduction, gradual increases were then observed through lockdown. This suggests that the return of vehicles to the road during early lockdown has already offset much of the air quality improvement seen when locking down (provisional estimate 50 to 70% by 01 July). While locking down O₃ increased (7 to 7.4 μg·m^-3 or 14 to 17% at Urban stations) broadly in line with NO₂ reductions, but later changes suggest significant non-lockdown contributions to O₃ during the months that followed. Increases of similar magnitudes were observed for both PM₁₀ (5.9 to 6.3 μg·m^-3) and PM_2.5 (3.9 to 5.0 μg·m^-3) at both Rural and Urban stations alike, but the distribution of changes suggests the lockdown was not an obvious direct source of changes in levels of either of these species during this period, and that more complex contributions, e.g. from resuspension and secondary aerosol, may be more likely major drivers for these changes.

SUBMITTER: Ropkins K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7492802 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The UK implemented a lockdown in Spring (2020) to curtail the person-to-person transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Measures restricted movements to one outing per day for exercise and shopping, otherwise most people were restricted to their dwelling except for key workers (e.g. medical, supermarkets, and transport). In this study, we quantified changes to air quality across the United Kingdom from 30/03/2020 to 03/05/2020 (weeks 14-18), the period of most stringent travel restrictions. Daily pollutant measurements of NO2, O3 and PM2.5 from the national network of monitoring sites during this period were compared with measurements over the same period during 2017-19. Comparisons were also made with predicted concentrations for the 2020 period from business-as-usual (BAU) modelling, where the contributions of normal anthropogenic activities were estimated under the observed meteorological conditions. During the lockdown study period there was a 69% reduction in traffic overall (74% reduction in light and 35% in heavy vehicles). Measurements from 129 monitoring stations, identified mean reductions in NO2 of 38.3% (-8.8 μg/m3) and PM2.5 of 16.5% (-2.2 μg/m3). Improvements in NO2 and PM2.5 were largest at urban traffic sites and more modest at background locations where a large proportion of the population live. In contrast, O3 concentrations on average increased by 7.6% (+4.8 μg/m3) with the largest increases at roadside sites due to reductions in local emissions of NO. A lack of VOC monitoring limited our capacity to interpret changes in O3 at urban background locations. BAU models predicted comparable NO2 reductions and O3 gains, although PM2.5 episodes would have been more prominent without lockdown. Results demonstrate the relatively modest contribution of traffic to air quality, suggesting that sustained improvements in air quality require actions across various sectors, including working with international and European initiatives on long-range transport air pollutants, especially PM2.5 and O3.

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Early observations on the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on air quality trends across the UK.

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