The COVID-19 pandemic strongly affected global logistics and supply chains, and hence shipping activity. This challenge asks you to target the characterization of dynamic shipping activities as seen from space.
we expect that the amount of NO2 as a main pollutants emitted from burning fuels in ship, has decreased after pandemic. Because marine traffic during pandemic reduced. We consider Hormuz Strait that connects Persian gulf to Oman sea. Ship traffic in this area has always been considerable. So, we try to compared copernicus products of NO2 in time gaps defined. But the results were the opposite of our expectations in our area. We guessed that these results may not be right for some results. So, we got data from Giovanni in longer time for before and during the pandemic.
Although, pandemic resulted in dying a lot of people and impose economical pressure on governments and people, it has demonstrated us that the environment needs to breath. Unwanted reduction in marine traffic has improved the air on the oceans and it is understandable seagulls and birds and even all oceanic creature including plants, fishes, mammals, etc in vastness of oceans have experienced sane conditions after decades.
We got NO2 Total Column from OMNO2d v003 with daily resolution and space resolution 0.25 degree in summer season (JJA) 2018 and 2020, before and through pandemic, respectively. As well as winter data in DJF(2017-2018) and DJF (2020-2021), before and during pandemic, respectively.
Then we plot in geographical coordinate: 53.7012 E – 58.1836 E & 23.5547N – 27.6855 N and then we plotted time average map.
According to our expectations in both seasons, the values of NO2 were lower during pandemic in comparison to before pandemic. For considering the impact of cloud fraction in observational NO2 data, we plotted scatter (statics) graphs with NO2 and observational Cloud Fraction (Daytime/ Ascending, AIRS-only) AIRS3STM v006. The correlation values in both seasons, before and during pandemic were near zero with cloud fraction near to 0.2.
So, the observational NO2 data have not been impacted by cloud cover and changes in NO2 in both seasons could be compared and judged before and during the pandemic.
Therefore, our assumption was proved. Reduction in marine traffic resulted in reduction of NO2.
The reduction of NO2 in summer 2021 is more obvious.
We cannot compare wind data with NO2, because the temporal resolution were not the same. But because the lifespan of NO2 is short, it seems wind speed can not transport and affect them.
We used from GIOVANNI. it was great and it provided us with accessible data to demonstrate our assumption.
we have no website or blog. Just there is a twitter page:
@LidaSereshki
we upload the resulted slides on it.
because we had no time, we could not write any codes. just we used great GIOVANNI data.
https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/
https://maps.s5p-pal.com/no2/
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.