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

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.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

The trend of 24 h mean concentrations; (a) PM₁₀, (b) PM_2.5, (c) SO₂, (d) NO₂, (g) NH₃ and (h) NAQI and 8 h mean daily maxima of (e) CO and (f) O₃ between 3rd of March and 14th April 2020 (On 24th March 2020 the lockdown commenced) in NCT Delhi, India (Mahato et al., 2020).

Fig. 2

NAQI change at NCT Delhi from 3 March to 14 April 2020 (Mahato et al., 2020).

Fig. 3

Comparison of air quality before the COVID-19 pandemic and after the lockout in several largest cities of the world; (a) New Delhi, India, (b) Beijing, China, (c) Paris, France and (d) New York, USA (Saadat et al., 2020).

Fig. 4

NO₂ emissions in Wuhan (China) during the year 2019 and 2020 (NASA 2020).

Fig. 5

ER correlated with pollutant parameters in different regions of India; PM2.5, PM₁₀, O₃, NO₂, SO₂ and CO. ERs are shown separately during the current year and previous 3 years (2017–2019) during the study period (Sharma et al., 2020).

Fig. 6

Ben Morris posted pictures of the beach masks on the Soko Islands, Hong Kong (Kalina and Tilley, 2020).