Effect of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Air Pollution in the Ostrava Region

Jan Bitta, Vladislav Svozilík and Aneta Svozilíková Krakovská
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Jan Bitta: Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow Region, 141980 Dubna, Russia
Vladislav Svozilík: Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow Region, 141980 Dubna, Russia
Aneta Svozilíková Krakovská: Faculty of Mining and Geology, VSB—Technical University of Ostrava, 708 00 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-20

Abstract: A proper estimation of anti-epidemic measures related to the influence of the COVID-19 outbreak on air quality has to deal with filtering out the weather influence on pollution concentrations. The goal of this study was to estimate the effect of anti-epidemic measures at three pollution monitoring stations in the Ostrava region. Meteorological data were clustered into groups with a similar weather pattern, and pollution data were divided into subsets according to weather patterns. Then each subset was evaluated separately. Our estimates showed a 4.1–5.7% decrease in NO x concentrations attributed to lower traffic intensity during the lockdown. The decrease of PM 2.5 varied more significantly between monitoring stations. The highest decrease (4.7%) was detected at the traffic monitoring station, while there was no decrease detected at the rural monitoring station, which focuses mainly on domestic heating pollution. The key result of the study was the development of an analytical method that is able to take into account the effect of meteorological conditions. The method is much simpler and easy to replicate as an alternative to other published methods.

Keywords: Ostrava; COVID-19; air pollution; NO x; PM 2.5; cluster analysis; monitoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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