Air Pollution, during Lockdown Fell Sharply !

The expansive versatility limitations toward the start of the COVID pandemic in March 2020 caused a remarkable circumstance for air sciences: "During the 2020 lockdown, we had the option to straightforwardly examine the real impacts of radical traffic limitations on the conveyance of air contaminations and on the outflow of environment gases," says Innsbruck climatic researcher Thomas Karl. With his group, he has now distributed an itemized examination of air quality during the principal lockdown in the city of Innsbruck, Austria, in the diary Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Air Pollution 

Their study is also the first to quantify the trade-offs and consequences of different clean-air strategies for CO 2 removal. They show that the former most effectively targets VOCs, but that a combination of emissions mitigation measures, emissions trading, and regulation targeting the main emitters all have promising potential for reducing PM2.5 (soot particles smaller than 2.5 μm).

A scientific benchmark for future projects

By covering the background, they also serve as a scientific benchmark for future research projects. In their investigation, the researchers tested four models of VOC transfer in relation to how local air quality in Vienna was affected by the 2015 nuclear catastrophe in Japan and by the following year's nuclear accident in France. All the models predicted that the ION exchange of air pollutants was tightly linked to the biomass and biofuel waste emission limits set by the European Union (EU), and that emissions limits and/or variable dispersion requirements for organic and inorganic solid waste drove a transport bottleneck into the Vienna region.

When atmospheric transport was obstructed by plant litter and emissions, measures taken to suppress biomass burning had no effect on particle dispersion. The inbound transfer of VOCs from external sources, such as chemical waste from car traffic, also did not noticeably change. For the first time, this fact made it possible to validate the ION exchange transfer model used by Innsbruck as an energy-independent proxy for air transport, which can be used for initial weather forecasting and climate modeling. As a proof of principle, the authors focused on two factors affecting air quality: emissions from traffic and VOCs. "Compared to a baseline measurement using no concentration modulation, we were able to show that these two factors have a strong impact on air pollutants coming to Vienna from other parts of the country," says researcher Sandra Brachmann, who prepared the transport data.

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