Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on NO 2 , O 3 , PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations and assessing air quality changes in Baghdad, Iraq.

Covid-19 was first reported in Iraq on February 24, 2020. Since then, to prevent its propagation, the Iraqi government declared a state of health emergency. A set of rapid and strict countermeasures have taken, including locking down cities and limiting population's mobility. In this study, concentrations of four criteria pollutants, NO ₂ , O ₃ , PM _2.5 and PM ₁₀ before the lockdown from January 16 to February 29, 2020, and during four periods of partial and total lockdown from March 1 to July 24, 2020, in Baghdad were analysed. Overall, 6, 8 and 15% decreases in NO ₂ , PM _2.5 , and PM ₁₀ concentrations, respectively in Baghdad during the 1st partial and total lockdown from March 1 to April 21, compared to the period before the lockdown. While, there were 13% increase in O ₃ for same period. During the 2nd partial lockdown from June 14 to July 24, NO ₂ and PM _2.5 decreases 20 and 2.5%, respectively. While, there were 525 and 56% increase in O ₃ and PM ₁₀ , respectively for same period. The air quality index (AQI) improved by 13% in Baghdad during the 1st partial lockdown from March 1 to April 21, compared to its pre-lockdown. The results of NO ₂ tropospheric column extracted from the Sentinel-5P satellite shown the NO ₂ emissions reduced up to 35 to 40% across Iraq, due to lockdown measures, between January and July, 2020, especially across the major cities such as Baghdad, Basra and Erbil. The lockdown due to COVID-19 has drastic effects on social and economic aspects. However, the lockdown also has some positive effect on natural environment and air quality improvement.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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