• Laurent Menut, Bertrand Bessagnet, Guillaume Siour, Sylvain Mailler, Romain Pennel, and Arineh Cholakian.
• Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD), Ecole Polytechnique, IPSL Research University, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université Paris-Saclay, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France. Electronic address: menut@lmd.polytechnique.fr.
• Sci. Total Environ. 2020 Nov 1; 741: 140426.

AbstractRecent studies based on observations have shown the impact of lockdown measures taken in various European countries to contain the Covid-19 pandemic on air quality. However, these studies are often limited to compare situations without and with lockdown measures, which correspond to different time periods and then under different meteorological conditions. We propose a modelling study with the WRF-CHIMERE modelling suite for March 2020, an approach allowing to compare atmospheric composition with and without lockdown measures without the biases of meteorological conditions. This study shows that the lockdown effect on atmospheric composition, in particular through massive traffic reductions, has been important for several short-lived atmospheric trace species, with a large reduction in NO2 concentrations, a lower reduction in Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations and a mitigated effect on ozone concentrations due to non-linear chemical effects.Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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