Impact of COVID-19 on Air Quality in Israel

TL;DR

This study quantifies the impact of COVID-19 on air quality in Israel, showing significant reductions in transport-related pollution but increases in industrial pollution, with COVID-19 accounting for up to 22% of pollution variation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how COVID-19 affected different sources of air pollution in Israel, highlighting the relative changes in transport and industrial emissions.

Findings

Transport pollution reduced by 40% during COVID-19

Industrial pollution increased by 34% during COVID-19

COVID-19 explains up to 22% of pollution variation

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused, in general, a sharp reduction in traffic and industrial activities. This in turn leaded to a reduction in air pollution around the world. It is important to quantity the amount of that reduction in order to estimate the influence weight of traffic and industrial activities over the total variation of air quality. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on air pollution in Israel, which is considered one of the countries with a higher air pollution than other Western countries. The results reveal two main findings: 1. During the COVID-19 outbreak, relative to its earlier closest period, the pollution from transport, based on Nitrogen oxides, had reduced by 40$\%$ on average, whereas the pollution from industrial, based on Grand-level ozone, had increased by 34$\%$ on average. Relative to 2019, the COVID-19 outbreak caused a reduction in air pollution from transport and industrial as well. 2. The explanation percent of the time period of COVID-19 is at most 22$\%$ over the total variation of each pollutant amount.