The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on urban photochemistry as inferred from TROPOMI

Movement restrictions were imposed in 2020 to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. These lock-down episodes provide a unique opportunity to study the sensitivity of urban photochemistry to temporary emission reductions and test air quality models. This study uses Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) nitrogen dioxide/carbon monoxide (NO₂/CO) ratios in urban plumes in combination with an exponential fitting procedure to infer changes in the NOx lifetime (τ_NOx) during Covid-19 lock-downs in the cities of Denver, Chicago, New York, Riyadh, Wuhan and Sao Paulo compared with the year before.

The strict lockdown policy in Wuhan led to a 65-80% reduction in NO₂, compared to 30-50% in the other cities that were studied. In New York and Wuhan, CO concentration was reduced by 10-15%, whereas over Riyadh, Denver, Chicago, and Sao Paulo the CO background concentration increased by 2-5 ppb. τ_NOx has been derived for calm (0.0 < U (m/s) < 3.5) and windy (5.0 < U (m/s) < 8.5) days to study the influence of wind speed. We find reductions in τ_NOx during Covid-19 lockdowns in all six megacities during calm days. The largest change in τ_NOx during calm days is found for Sao-Paulo (31.8 ± 9.0%), whereas the smallest reduction is observed over Riyadh (22 ± 6.6%). During windy days, reductions in τ_NOx are observed during Covid-19 lockdowns in New York and Chicago. However, over Riyadh τ_NOx is almost similar for windy days during the Covid-19 lockdown and the year before.

Ground-based measurements and the Chemistry Land-surface Atmosphere Soil Slab (CLASS) model have been used to validate the TROPOMI-derived results over Denver. CLASS simulates an enhancement of ozone (O₃) by 4 ppb along with reductions in NO (38.7%), NO₂ (25.7%) and CO (17.2%) during the Covid-19 lockdown in agreement with the ground-based measurements. In CLASS, decreased NO_x emissions reduce the removal of OH in the NO₂ + OH reaction, leading to higher OH concentrations and decreased τ_NOx . The reduction in τ_NOx inferred from TROPOMI (28 ± 9.0%) is in agreement with CLASS. These results indicate that TROPOMI derived NO₂/CO ratios provide useful information about urban photochemistry and that changes in photochemical lifetimes can successfully be detected.