Extra - Space Apps Challenge

Extra| Quiet Planet

Quiet Planet

The COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting social distancing recommendations and related restrictions have led to numerous short-term changes in economic and social activity around the world, all of which may have impacts on our environment. Your challenge is to use space-based data to document the local to global environmental changes caused by COVID-19 and the associated societal responses.

Investigating Changes in NO2 Levels above Wuhan and London

Summary

To analyse the effects of COVID-19 on the amounts of NO2 emitted into the atmosphere from large cities. Comparing this to previous years to better understand how emissions change periodically.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We have shown through our analysis that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a large decrease in the amount of a major atmospheric pollutant above large cities due to changes in human behaviour.

How We Developed This Project

We sampled data from maps produced by NASA Giovanni, measuring the number of molecules of NO2 in an atmospheric column above a square centimeter of the surface, against time. We measured levels between September 2019 and the present day, looking for differences in trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous years were analysed over the same range of dates as a control. Data were analysed and figures produced in python. We initially found it difficult to access any data that we could interpret successfully from the resources provided. With Wuhan it is clear to see a decrease in NO2 levels from previous years averages due to the implementation of a lockdown.

Project Demo

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cWmJDvqfpSyy9_zLjHPhU3qTNchT5S_y?usp=sharing

Data & Resources

https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/

Global Judging

This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.