Impact of COVID-related lockdowns on environmental and climate change scenarios

Shakeel Ahmad Bhat; Omar Bashir; Muhammad Bilal; Aamir Ishaq; Mehraj U Din Dar; Rohitashw Kumar; Rouf Ahmad Bhat; Farooq Sher

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2021.110839

Impact of COVID-related lockdowns on environmental and climate change scenarios

Environ Res. 2021 Apr:195:110839. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.110839. Epub 2021 Feb 4.

Authors

Shakeel Ahmad Bhat¹, Omar Bashir², Muhammad Bilal³, Aamir Ishaq⁴, Mehraj U Din Dar⁴, Rohitashw Kumar¹, Rouf Ahmad Bhat⁵, Farooq Sher⁶

Affiliations

¹ College of Agricultural Engineering, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Shalimar Srinagar, India.
² Division of Food Science and Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Shalimar Srinagar, India.
³ School of Life Science and Food Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huaian, 223003, China.
⁴ Department of Soil and Water Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India.
⁵ Division of Environmental Science Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Shalimar Srinagar, India.
⁶ School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Automotive Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Environmental and Computing, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, United Kingdom. Electronic address: Farooq.Sher@coventry.ac.uk.

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a major challenge from human health perspective. The alarming exponential increase in the transmission and fatality rates related to this disease has brought the world to a halt so as to cope up with its stern consequences. This has led to the imposition of lockdown across the globe to prevent the further spread of this disease. This lock down brought about drastic impacts at social and economic fronts. However, it also posed some positive impacts on environment as well particularly in the context of air quality due to reduction in concentrations of particulate matter (PM), NO₂ and CO across the major cities of the globe as indicated by several research organizations. In China, Italy, France and Spain, there were about 20-30% reduction in NO₂ emission while in USA 30% reduction in NO₂ emission were observed. Compared to previous year, there was 11.4% improvement in the air quality in China. Drastic reductions in NO (-77.3%), NO₂ (-54.3%) and CO (-64.8%) (negative sign indicating a decline) concentrations were observed in Brazil during partial lockdown compared to the five year monthly mean. In India there were about -51.84, -53.11, -17.97, -52.68, -30.35, 0.78 and -12.33% reduction in the concentration of PM_10, PM_2.5, SO_2, NO_2, CO, O₃ and NH₃ respectively. This article highlights the impact of lockdown on the environment and also discusses the pre and post lockdown air pollution scenario across major cities of the world. Several aspect of environment such as air, water, noise pollution and waste management during, pre and post lockdown scenario were studied and evaluated comprehensively. This research would therefore serve as a guide to environmentalist, administrators and frontline warriors for fighting our the way to beat this deadly disease and minimize its long term implications on health and environment.

Keywords: Air quality index; Climate change; Environmental impacts; Global pandemic; Outbreak; Waste management and Covid-19.

MeSH terms

Air Pollutants* / analysis
Air Pollution* / analysis
Brazil
COVID-19*
China
Cities
Climate Change
Communicable Disease Control
Environmental Monitoring
France
Humans
India
Italy
Pandemics
Particulate Matter / analysis
SARS-CoV-2
Spain

Substances

Air Pollutants
Particulate Matter