Effects of corona virus disease‐19 control measures on air quality in North China

Zheng, Xiangyu; Guo, Bin; He, Jing; Chen, Song Xi

Corona virus disease‐19 (COVID‐19) has substantially reduced human activities and the associated anthropogenic emissions. This study quantifies the effects of COVID‐19 control measures on six major air pollutants over 68 cities in North China by a Difference in Relative‐Difference method that allows estimation of the COVID‐19 effects while taking account of the general annual air quality trends, temporal and meteorological variations, and the spring festival effects. Significant COVID‐19 effects on all six major air pollutants are found, with NO(2) having the largest decline (−39.6%), followed by PM(2.5) (−30.9%), O(3) (−16.3%), PM(10) (−14.3%), CO (−13.9%), and the least in SO(2) (−10.0%), which shows the achievability of air quality improvement by a large reduction in anthropogenic emissions. The heterogeneity of effects among the six pollutants and different regions can be partly explained by coal consumption and industrial output data.