Four-Month Changes in Air Quality during and after the COVID-19 Lockdown in Six Megacities in China

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) resulted in a stringent lockdown in China to reduce the infection rate. We adopted a machine learning technique to analyze the air quality impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown from January to April 2020 for six megacities with different lockdown durations. Compared with the scenario without lockdowns, we estimated that the lockdown reduced ambient NO₂ concentrations by 36-53% during the most restrictive periods, which involved Level-1 public health emergency response control actions. Several cities lifted the Level-1 control actions during February and March, and the avoided NO₂ concentrations subsequently dropped below 10% in late April. Traffic analysis during the same periods in Beijing and Chengdu confirmed that traffic emission changes were a major factor in the substantial NO₂ reduction, but they were also associated with increased O₃ concentrations. The lockdown also reduced PM_2.5 concentrations, although heavy pollution episodes occurred on certain days due to the enhanced formation of secondary aerosols in association with the increased atmospheric oxidizing capacity. We also observed that the changes in air pollution levels decreased as the lockdown was gradually eased in various cities.