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<

SUBMITTER: Ropkins K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7492802 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature