ASSESSMENT OF AIR QUALITY IN INDO GANGETIC PLAIN DURING LOCKDOWN PHASES IN 2020

Abstract

Analyzing the trend of air quality from previous years to date, helps policy makers and community to know how to deal with air pollution. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as pandemic in early March. India announced Janata curfew which means peoples curfew on Sunday 22, March 2020. From 22nd March 2020 throughout all the lockdown phases, the air quality was observed and different air pollutants decreased in concentration apart from Ozone. This study focuses on concentrations of five pollutants PM2.5, NO2, NO, ozone and SO2 from January, 2016 to December, 2020. The study is done for 7 cities in the Indo Gangetic Plain (IGP), these include Delhi (capital city of India), Rohtak (city in state of Haryana and upwind of Delhi), Faridabad (most populated city in Haryana and downwind of Delhi), Kanpur (industrial city in state of Uttar Pradesh), Agra (city in Uttar Pradesh with high tourism), Varanasi (holy city in Uttar Pradesh known for high number of funeral pyres) and Lucknow (capital city of Uttar Pradesh). The concentration of different air pollutants has been decreasing from 2016 for all cities, this shows the effect of multiple control measures put in place by the Indian Government. The trend greatly changed in the year 2020 which also shows the effect of different lockdown phases to the air quality. Using spatial analysis, its clearly seen that PM2.5 is the one that mostly pollutes the air mostly the during winter season. However much there was lockdown in 2020 from the second quarter of the year. But in comparison with the same periods in 2019, it’s also seen that there is great influence caused by meteorological factors, as it is seen that during winter the air quality index of PM2.5 is poor.