Begou, P.; Evagelopoulos, V.; Charisiou, N.D. Variability of Air Pollutant Concentrations and Their Relationships with Meteorological Parameters during COVID-19 Lockdown in Western Macedonia. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1398.
Begou, P.; Evagelopoulos, V.; Charisiou, N.D. Variability of Air Pollutant Concentrations and Their Relationships with Meteorological Parameters during COVID-19 Lockdown in Western Macedonia. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1398.
Begou, P.; Evagelopoulos, V.; Charisiou, N.D. Variability of Air Pollutant Concentrations and Their Relationships with Meteorological Parameters during COVID-19 Lockdown in Western Macedonia. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1398.
Begou, P.; Evagelopoulos, V.; Charisiou, N.D. Variability of Air Pollutant Concentrations and Their Relationships with Meteorological Parameters during COVID-19 Lockdown in Western Macedonia. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1398.
Abstract
The lockdown implemented to tackle the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on air quality. Globally, studies have shown that the air pollutants levels reduced temporally during the restriction measures. In this study, we evaluated the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the air quality of Western Macedonia, Greece, using the hourly concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 along with meteorological data from the Air Quality Monitoring Stations (AQMS) operated by the Lignite Center of Western Macedonia. In Western Macedonia, previous studies have identified that there is a general reduction in air pollutants levels during the last decade due to coal phase-out plan for power generation. During the lockdown the levels of PM2.5 and PM10 decreased further. However, reduced emissions from the local mining activities and lignite-fired power plant electricity generation, as well as the weather conditions seems to contribute to improving air quality.
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic; lignite-fired power plants; Particulate Matter (PM); Western Macedonia
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
