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Drastic drop in pollution in China due to the coronavirus
The impact of the coronavirus is affecting one of the most powerful countries in the world, China in many ways. From an economy that seems to be reeling at times and affects half the world or to achieve the historic milestone of putting 50 million people in isolation.
As China works to strive to combat the spread of coronavirus with major traffic restrictions or local closures in many cities, it also appears to be having a dramatic effect on the country's pollution levels.
NASA, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) have just shown some satellite photographs that they have detected significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) about China.
The maps on this page show the nitrogen dioxide concentrations. Nitrogen dioxide is a by-product of burning fossil fuels - coal, oil, gas, or diesel - and can come from cars, trucks, buses, or power plants, along with other industrial facilities.
Its dangers are well known to human health, the environment or the planet; can cause breathing problems like asthma and infectionsWhile it can mix with other chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acid rain and pollute coastal waters, for example.
And does this affect us who are in the other part of the world? Well, actually, yes, if there is an extension in time, as we already explained in this article about how pollution moves through the Earth and we can verify it in this animation produced by NASA:
The maps show NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) values across China from January 1 to January 20, 2022 (before quarantine) and February 10 to 25 (during quarantine). According to NASA scientists … “The reduction in NO2 pollution was evident, first, near Wuhan, but eventually it has spread throughout the country. It is the first time that such a dramatic decline has been seen in such a wide area of the country. ".
The data was collected by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on ESA's Sentinel-5 satellite. A related sensor, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite, has been making similar measurements.
The decline in nitrogen dioxide in 2022 also coincided with Lunar New Year celebrations in China and much of Asia. Generally, businesses and factories are closed from the last week of January to early February to celebrate the festival.
As we see in the attached image (See row 2022), air pollution usually decreases during the Lunar New Year, and then increases once the celebration is over. For this year and as we can see in the graph, the change is much more radical with a clearer decrease in pollution.
According to Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center… “This year, the rate of reduction is more significant than in previous years and is lasting longer. I'm not surprised, because many cities in the country have taken restrictive measures to minimize the spread of the virus..
In reality, the decision-making of the Chinese administration can change the landscape of a sector in a decisive way and for the benefit of the environment. An example, and this time on a voluntary basis, we already verified in the article on how China's electric buses affect the oil industry.
We can read the reference article from the NASA Observatory here.
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