ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial impacts on the Earth system and socioeconomic activities. Restrictions aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19 by limiting human interaction have led to significant reductions in air pollution and CO2 emissions, improvement in water quality, changes in agricultural output, and changes in economic activity for certain industries such as airlines and shipping, among others [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Those economic impact assessment related information are made available on the trilateral COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard (https://eodashboard.org) [6]. The presented use cases in economic activities make full use of the combined satellites fleet of NASA, ESA and JAXA as well as the expertise of the Earth Observation community. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, many countries worldwide implemented a series of social distancing and containment measures as an attempt to limit its spread. Those measures have led to a significant slowing down of economic activities, drastic drops in road and air traffic, and strong reductions of industrial activities in nonessential sectors, which in turn affected atmospheric emissions and air quality worldwide. Concentrations of short-lived pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, are indicators of changes in economic slowdowns and are comparable to changes in emissions. Nitrogen oxides are mainly produced by human activity and the combustion of (fossil) fuels, such as road traffic, ships, power plants and other industrial facilities. Nitrogen Dioxide can have a significant impact on human health, both directly and indirectly through the formation of ozone and small particles. The Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite nitrogen dioxide concentrations measurements have been used to investigate COVID-19 impact on air quality from space. Global maps of Copernicus Sentinel-5P tropospheric Nitrogen Dioxide measurements have been included – together with other Sentinel measurements – into an on-line tool (dashboard) to provide investigations/results about changes to the Earth environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to the public: race.esa.int. © 2021 IEEE.