Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, efforts to prevent the virus spreading have included severe travel restrictions and the closure of workplaces, inevitably leading to a significant drop in emissions of air pollutants.
This has provided scientists with a unique opportunity to examine how air pollutant concentrations respond to an abrupt and prolonged change, followed by policy-relatable increases as restrictions are incrementally relaxed.
The UK’s Royal Meteorological Society recently hosted a talk by Professor James Lee from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of York, focused on the effect of the outbreak on air pollution levels (e.g. NOx, PM2.5, VOCs and O3) in the UK and Europe, based on data from a range of in-situ monitoring networks.