The effect of COVID-19 lockdown on the air environment in India

Abstract

COVID-19 is a huge tragedy for the world community. Everything in the world is affected due to this pandemic right from economy to resources where the economy of major countries of the world are facing recession and resources are surplus with no takers at all. The measures to contain COVID-19 pandemic include lockdown, social distancing, isolation, and home quarantine. Lockdown adopted by the different governments which involve non-functioning of all the industry and manufacturing units. However, as a blessing in disguise, these measures have a positive effect on the environment in terms of reduction in toxic gasses like nitrogen dioxide, aerosols, atmosphere ozone, particulate matter, and improvement in air quality. In this paper, the effect on various environmental parameters like aerosol, ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and temperature on India by lockdown due to COVID-19 as a preventive measure has been analyzed. The work involves the refining and preprocessing of raw data of this year and last year of various harmful pollutants present in the environment along with satellite images from National Aeronautics and Space Administration for comparison of different parameters. It has been observed that with the above adopted measures temperature has been reduced to near about 15 degree Celsius, there is also reduction in humidity i.e. it is reduced to 40%, particulate matter (PM2.5) reaches near about normal i.e. 40 g/m³ and carbon monoxide levels has also been reduced to 10 ppm. The main idea is to emphasize the fact that how the environment is self-healing during the lockdown. And this study will be beneficial to environmentalists and industry professionals to make the future strategy for improving the environment.