Fingerprints of the COVID-19 economic downturn and recovery on ozone anomalies at high-elevation sites in North America and western Europe

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Putero, Davide, Cristofanelli, Paolo, Chang, Kai-Lan, Dufour, Gaelle, Beachley, Gregory, Couret, Cedric, Effertz, Peter, Jaffe, Daniel A., Kubistin, Dagmar, Lynch, Jason, Petropavlovskikh, Irina, Puchalski, Melissa, Sharac, Timothy, Sive, Barkley C., Steinbacher, Martin, Torres, Carlos, Cooper, Owen R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: European Geosciences Union 2023
• Subjects: COVID-19; Economic downturn; Ozone anomalies; High-elevation sites; Tropospheric ozone; Arctic; National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11765/15304

With a few exceptions, most studies on tropospheric ozone (O3) variability during and following the COrona VIrus Disease (COVID-19) economic downturn focused on high-emission regions or urban environments. In this work, we investigated the impact of the societal restriction measures during the COVID-19 pandemic on surface O3 at several high-elevation sites across North America and western Europe. Monthly O3 anomalies were calculated for 2020 and 2021, with respect to the baseline period 2000–2019, to explore the impact of the economic downturn initiated in 2020 and its recovery in 2021. In total, 41 high-elevation sites were analyzed: 5 rural or mountaintop stations in western Europe, 19 rural sites in the western US, 4 sites in the western US downwind of highly polluted source regions, and 4 rural sites in the eastern US, plus 9 mountaintop or high-elevation sites outside Europe and the United States to provide a “global” reference. In 2020, the European high-elevation sites showed persistent negative surface O3 anomalies during spring (March–May, i.e., MAM) and summer (June–August, i.e., JJA), except for April. The pattern was similar in 2021, except for June. The rural sites in the western US showed similar behavior, with negative anomalies in MAM and JJA 2020 (except for August) and MAM 2021. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 654109). Surface O3 measurements at Summit are made possible via the US National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs and their contract with Battelle Arctic Research Operations (contract no. 49100420C0001). Owen R. Cooper, Kai-Lan Chang, Irina Petropavlovskikh, and Peter Effertz were supported by a NOAA cooperative agreement (grant no. NA22OAR4320151). The publication costs of this research have been partially supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework program through ACTMO-ACCESS Integrating Activity (grant ...