Assessment of Air Quality Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has forced many countries implement social restrictions, including Indonesia. There has been a growing interest in understanding the impact of the pandemic on air quality. This research analyses the air pollution before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Jakarta and Banjarmasin, Indonesia, with a detailed analysis. It compared the results with previous years to determine the significant improvement in air quality and related weather factors obtained from Landsat 8 and 9 imagery. OMI and MERRA-2 were analysed for PM2.5, NO2, SO2, O3 and WRF-Chem model result especially for PM2.5 against the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, there was a decrease in PM2.5 during the pandemic year in Jakarta, although it was not as good as in 2016 conditions. In Jakarta and Banjarmasin, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2 decreased in 2021 from 2020, which were in line with the high incidence of COVID-19 in 2021. This shows that more air quality increased in the form of healthy days in DKI Jakarta in 2020 than in 2019. In other words, there was an increase in air quality during the implementation Large-Scale Social Restriction (PSBB) policy in 2020 compared to 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.