ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 outbreak has significantly affected global industrial and transportation markets. Airlines, rails, and cars’industries and their supporting energy sectors have been substantially disrupted by the pandemic. This has resulted in undermined energy demand around the world during 2019 and 2020. The organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) led by Saudi Arabia failed to persuade Russia to cutback oil supplies to deal with the loss of demand from the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 March 2020, Saudi Arabia announced a raise in its oil production and offered a large discount on its crude oil sales. By April 2020, Saudi Arabia increased its oil production to about 12 million-oil barrels/day. This rise in oil production has not only resulted in the biggest fall in oil prices since the 1991 Gulf War but also increased methane emissions over the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regions. Here, we report 2019 and 2020 data set of average seasonal methane-mixing ratio retrieved from TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board of S5P spacecraft over 19 refineries and oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. Low methane emissions were recorded over western and central Saudi Arabia compared to the eastern side of the country. In general, high methane emissions were observed in 2020 compared to 2019 around oil refineries and fields in western, central, and eastern regions of Saudi Arabia as well as over other GCC countries. This could be attributed to the oil high production associated with the oil prices fluctuation during 2020.
ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the status of air quality in the oil-rich six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries located in the Arabian Peninsula, southwest of Asia. Both natural and anthropogenic pollutants affect air quality in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Dust storms are frequent over the region during spring (March-May) and summer (June-August) seasons and load large amounts of dust particles in the atmosphere reducing visibility, affecting human activities, and causing severe air pollution. Unprecedented infrastructure activities, overusing governmental subsidized energy, water desalination plants, heavy traffic in large cities, and industrial plants are largely contributing to the anthropogenic aerosol emissions in the Gulf Cooperation Council region. Dust and aerosol particle deposition affect the marine environment and phytoplankton growth in the Arabian Gulf (AG) and the Sea of Oman (SO). The oil well fire in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War I and the drone attack on the oil refineries over Saudi Arabia in 2019 show that the region is vulnerable to war and terrorist attacks that can cause a regional environmental disaster. Morphological characterization of aerosol particles in the Gulf Cooperation Council region shows dust particles mostly dominating with the large intrusion of industrial pollutants. In view of the national and regional lockdown, air quality improved over the large Gulf Cooperation Council cities during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Mecca and Madinah are two holy cities where millions of people in general, visit throughout the years, during Hajj (Muslim's pilgrimage) time number of people visit these holy cities from different parts of the world is very high. However, the Government of Saudi Arabia only allowed 1000 pilgrims during the 2020 Hajj especially when the world is suffering from COVID-19. In the present paper, a detailed analysis of air quality parameters available from ground measurements have been carried over major cities of Saudi Arabia, Mecca, Madinah, and Jeddah from June to September 2019 and 2020. At Mecca and Jeddah, PM10, NO2 and CO concentrations are found to be higher in comparison to stations located close to Madinah. In addition, meteorological parameters, temperature, relative humidity, and wind directions are also analysed to understand changes associated with the meteorological parameters. Our detailed analysis shows a reduction in concentrations of pollutants during the 2020 Hajj, when the lockdown was observed in Saudi Arabia due to COVID-19. During June-August 2020 lockdown period, no major changes in PM10 concentration was observed since there were frequent dust events were observed. In contrast, our results show 44% reduction in NO2 (8.77 ppbv in 2019 to 4.97 ppbv in 2020) and 16% reduction in CO (0.85 ppm in 2019 to 0.72 ppm in 2020) concentrations during COVID-19 restrictions. The concentrations of NO2 and CO do not cause any issue for the air quality as NO2 and CO Indices lie within the green band (Air quality index 0-50). In Mecca, Madinah and Jeddah, the air quality is generally affected during Hajj, but during 2020, the concentration of particulate matter was influenced by local weather conditions.