First Chinese ultraviolet-visible hyperspectral satellite instrument implicating global air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide imposed lockdown measures in early 2020, resulting in notable reductions in air pollutant emissions. The changes in air quality during the pandemic have been investigated in numerous studies via satellite observations. Nevertheless, no relevant research has been gathered using Chinese satellite instruments, because the poor spectral quality makes it extremely difficult to retrieve data from the spectra of the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument (EMI), the first Chinese satellite-based ultraviolet-visible spectrometer monitoring air pollutants. However, through a series of remote sensing algorithm optimizations from spectral calibration to retrieval, we successfully retrieved global gaseous pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO), sulfur dioxide (SO), and formaldehyde (HCHO), from EMI during the pandemic. The abrupt drop in NO successfully captured the time for each city when effective measures were implemented to prevent the spread of the pandemic, for example, in January 2020 in Chinese cities, February in Seoul, and March in Tokyo and various cities across Europe and America. Furthermore, significant decreases in HCHO in Wuhan, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Seoul indicated that the majority of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions were anthropogenic. Contrastingly, the lack of evident reduction in Beijing and New Delhi suggested dominant natural sources of VOCs. By comparing the relative variation of NO to gross domestic product (GDP), we found that the COVID-19 pandemic had more influence on the secondary industry in China, while on the primary and tertiary industries in Korea and the countries across Europe and America.