Influence of vehicular road emissions on urban air quality examined through high spatio-temporal resolution data during the COVID-19 lockdown
(2021) AGU Fall Meeting 2021 — Location: New Orleans, LA (13.December.2021)
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- Abstract
- The decrease in air pollutants concentration during the COVID-19 lockdown has been well documented; however, there has been no systematic analysis to derive a generalizable quantitative link to the drop in vehicular traffic. To bridge this gap, high spatial resolution air quality and geo-referenced vehicular traffic datasets were compiled for the city of London during three weeks with significant variation in traffic. A drop of ~30% in the contaminant concentration was documented, with similar trends for NO2 and PM2.5, between the weeks prior to the COVID-19 lockdown and after it in the city of London. For the same period, the drop in total vehicle count was about ~70%. The London analysis was then augmented with a meta-analysis of lower-resolution studies from 12 other cities. The results confirm that the improvement in air quality can be directly linked to the traffic reduction, and more importantly quantifies the elasticity (0.71 for NO2 and 0.56 for PM2.5) of their linkages to elucidate the contribution of vehicular emissions to adverse urban air quality. The findings can be used to project the positive impacts on urban air quality of the emerging shift to electric vehicles and micro-mobility in cities.
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Llaguno, M., & Bou-Zeid, E. (2021). Influence of vehicular road emissions on urban air quality examined through high spatio-temporal resolution data during the COVID-19 lockdown. AGU Fall Meeting 2021, New Orleans, LA. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/228407