Clean Air Blue Skies

October 09, 2020

Air pollution during a summer of lockdowns

The summer of 2020 has been quite different.

The ongoing public health crisis, besides having caused unprecedented disruption to business-asusual, has also given us a new prism through which we can view the air pollution crisis. The economic slowdown and implementation of lockdown measures have bent the pollution curve dramatically – blue skies have reappeared over cities where smog used to rule the roost.

This report from Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) delves deep into an examination of how clean the air actually became. CSE has put the available air quality data under scanner to understand the different dimensions of the change in air quality during the lockdown period. This granular view of pollutant-wise local trends across cities gives an insight into the challenges and how the new normal needs to be shaped.