Air and Water Quality Improvement during COVID-19 Lockdown

Pedro Silva, Mariana Ávila, Márcia Gonçalves

2021

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic forced many countries to adopt lockdown measures, temporarily closing factories, diminish maritime traffic and reducing the mobility of people in the cities. Analysis from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) on board Europe’s Sentinel-5P, 3A/B respectively, for the first wave of the COVID-19, have shown a substantial improvement in air and water quality. More specifically, since COVID-19 lockdown until the end April, Lisbon and Porto were at their lowest PM10 levels of about 20% and a drop of 33% in 2 years, while Madrid had a significant drop since lockdown with vales significantly below 2018 levels but still close to 2019 levels. In terms of NO2 levels, Lisbon had an historical minimum of the last 2 years, dropping more than 40% during most of April 2020. Finally, Madrid had 2-year lowest level of more than 30% since lockdown. Concerning the water quality in the Portuguese coastal waters, it was verified an increase in water transparency since confinement started until May, accordingly to the Total Suspended Matter (TSM) indicator. From February to March, March to April and April to May there was a reduction in TSM levels of 17%, 37% and 53% respectively.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Silva P., Ávila M. and Gonçalves M. (2021). Air and Water Quality Improvement during COVID-19 Lockdown. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM, ISBN 978-989-758-503-6, pages 109-115. DOI: 10.5220/0010397201090115

in Bibtex Style

@conference{gistam21,
author={Pedro Silva and Mariana Ávila and Márcia Gonçalves},
title={Air and Water Quality Improvement during COVID-19 Lockdown},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,},
year={2021},
pages={109-115},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010397201090115},
isbn={978-989-758-503-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,
TI - Air and Water Quality Improvement during COVID-19 Lockdown
SN - 978-989-758-503-6
AU - Silva P.
AU - Ávila M.
AU - Gonçalves M.
PY - 2021
SP - 109
EP - 115
DO - 10.5220/0010397201090115