Better air quality in Ukraine has nothing to do with COVID-19. Has it even improved at all?

26 березня 2020, 11:27

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the entire world to a standstill. One by one, the countries are severely limiting their people’s mobility and activities. Ukraine is no exception. Starting 12 March, education facilities were closed as a result of nationwide quarantine, and additional restrictions were imposed in some Ukrainian cities the following week. The coronavirus pandemic will take its toll on humanity in many ways, but there is one arguably positive thing about it. We have finally got an opportunity to analyse the environmental impact of a slowdown in human activity. After all, many manufacturing facilities have been halted, and vehicle traffic is much lower now. In the pre-crisis times, an experiment like this would be impossible. This is our chance to evaluate the actual effect of human activity on the environment. A remarkable example is that air pollution levels slumped in the countries that were the first to impose the restrictions. According to NASA, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentration in the atmosphere over China drastically decreased from 1 January to 20 January in China. Back to Ukraine, many news outlets ran stories last week about a drop in atmospheric emissions amid quarantine, most notably in Kyiv. Our team has made a point of studying this phenomenon and created a user-friendly service available to everyone to track the situation not just in the real-time, but with retrospective data, too. In spring, the quality of atmospheric air usually deteriorates as a result of rampant foliage disposal by burning. As people are confined to their houses and tend to their summer cottages, this factor shouldn’t have lost its influence. The industrial factor is still rather strong, too, despite the slowdown in manufacturing. Meanwhile, the use of surface transit should have gone down, though, because of the government’s recommendation to stay at home and transition the workforce to working remotely. For now, let’s take this as the only cause for the potential decrease in air pollution across the Ukrainian cities. We have analysed the air quality throughout the nationwide quarantine (12 March–23 March) and compare it to the figures of the previous 10 days (2 March–11 March). Bear in mind that the averages were calculated as an arithmetical mean of the readings from all the monitoring stations in the city. For a more in-depth analysis, the data from every station can be compared separately. They are available on the air quality map. So, let's start from the capital city. Apparently, from 12 March, when the quarantine was imposed, to 17 March, when Kyiv metro was closed, the quality of air in Kyiv did increase substantially against the previous period. However, there was a rise in wind speed, too, which is one of the main causes for the improvement. In other words—fine dust and other pollutants were blown away much more quickly. Then, the wind subsided and, as evidenced by the 18 March chart, the pollution levels were back to the usual elevated values. The closure of Kyiv metro, the city’s main public transit artery, also had taken its toll. The day people allegedly switched from metro to surface transit, the pollution levels went up. It is too early to conclude that the quarantine has already improved the quality of air in Kyiv. The industrial and transport air pollution levels are still rather high in Kyiv. If the wind doesn’t remove it quickly, the locals are in danger. Could it be that this is something characteristic of Kyiv only, and the findings are wrong? Let’s look at two other region-level administrative centres — Dnipro and Kharkiv. In Dnipro, the dynamic was the same. The higher the wind speed was, the better was the quality of air in Dnipro. Although the metro is not exactly popular as public transport in Dnipro, its closure, too, coincided with lower wind speeds and the start of the working week, when people rushed to their offices. The situation with the wind and a temporary improvement in air quality was expectedly the same in Kharkiv. Bear in mind that the consequences of Kharkiv metro closure were more serious as compared to Dnipro. The data for other cities is available on their respective pages. The analysis of air quality data for three cities in Ukraine over 22 days, including 12 days of quarantine, has revealed just one thing. Human activity has a much stronger environmental impact than quarantine measures. And the only thing that can save Ukrainians from the polluted air now is natural protection mechanisms, e.g. high winds. We can and will keep monitoring the changes in air quality in Ukraine. But the unique data gathered throughout the pandemic become infinitely more useful as evidence of how crucial it is to create preconditions for sustainable development. What we need is greener industries and transport, as well as simplified procedures for documenting administrative violations related to atmospheric air protection.