Features of Atmospheric Parameters and the Potential Impact During/Due to COVID-19 Lockdown

The first case of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It has spread and later led to the Wuhan City lockdown (i.e., transportation going into and out of Wuhan, as well as local business, being shut down) on January 23, 2020, in order to effectively control and reduce the spread of the disease. The lockdown being lifted seventy-six days later on April 8, 2020. Such city lockdown and lifting, first major case occurred in the world, has triggered our interests and provided us with a well-defined use case to start this study. We have examined the potential impact on certain atmospheric parameters, such as greenhouse gases (GHG) (e.g., NO2 and SO2), due to the city lockdown and its lifting. We also examine features of other parameters, such as air temperature, precipitation and water vapor during the lockdown episodes. There will also be a few more studied cases, due to other city or country lockdowns, to be presented at the meeting. All the data used (i.e., OMI for GHG; PMM IMERG for precipitation; MERRA-2 for air temperature; AIRS for water vapor) for this study are obtained and available (for free!) at Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).