Impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on air pollution at regional and urban background sites in northern Italy

Putaud, Jean-Philippe; Pozzoli, Luca; Pisoni, Enrico; Martins Dos Santos, Sebastiao; Lagler, Friedrich; Lanzani, Guido; Dal Santo, Umberto; Colette, Augustin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7597-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7597-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7597-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

Research article

|

19 May 2021

Research article |

| 19 May 2021

Impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on air pollution at regional and urban background sites in northern Italy

Jean-Philippe Putaud, Luca Pozzoli, Enrico Pisoni, Sebastiao Martins Dos Santos, Friedrich Lagler, Guido Lanzani, Umberto Dal Santo, and Augustin Colette

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7597-2021-supplement

Data sets

Joint Research Centre Data Catalogue European Commission https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/collection/abcis

ACTRIS Data Centre Norsk Institutt for Luftforskning (NILU) https://actris.nilu.no/

Richiesta Dati ARPA Lombardia https://www.arpalombardia.it/Pages/Aria/Richiesta-Dati.aspx

CAMS European air quality forecasts Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-europe-air-quality-forecasts?tab=form

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Short summary

To determine the impact of the COVID lockdown on air quality in northern Italy, measurements of atmospheric pollutants (NO₂, PM₁₀, O₃, NO, SO₂ ) were compared to the output of a model ignoring the lockdown. We found that NO₂ decreased on average by −30 % to −40 %. Unlike NO₂, PM₁₀ was not significantly affected due to the compensation of decreased emissions from traffic by increased emissions from domestic heating and/or by changes in atmospheric chemistry enhancing secondary aerosol formation.