Air quality and health impact of 2019–20 Black Summer megafires and COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia

RG Ryan; JD Silver; R Schofield

Journal article

Air quality and health impact of 2019–20 Black Summer megafires and COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia

RG Ryan, JD Silver, R Schofield

Environmental Pollution | ELSEVIER SCI LTD | Published : 2021

DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116498

Abstract

Poor air quality is an emerging problem in Australia primarily due to ozone pollution events and lengthening and more severe wildfire seasons. A significant deterioration in air quality was experienced in Australia's most populous cities, Melbourne and Sydney, as a result of fires during the so-called Black Summer which ran from November 2019 through to February 2020. Following this period, social, mobility and economic restrictions to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented in Australia. We quantify the air quality impact of these contrasting periods in the south-eastern states of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) using a meteorological normalisation approach. A Random Fo..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Robert G. Ryan Author

Jeremy Silver Author

Robyn Schofield Author

Related Projects (3)

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CLIMATE EXTREMES

TACKLING ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY GRAND CHALLENGES IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

The project aims to provide a southern hemisphere perspective on current challenges in atmospheric chemistry: air quality, oxidation capacit..

ATMOSPHERIC INTEGRATED RESEARCH ON BURDENS AND OXIDATIVE CAPACITY

Atmospheric integrated research on burdens and oxidative capacity: No single player in the Australian research community can make a large su..

Grants

Awarded by California Environmental Protection Agency

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sean Watt at the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage for assistance in accessing NSW air quality data. Similarly, we are grateful to the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency for making available air quality monitoring for study. We are grateful to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for access to meteorological information through http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/.This study was funded by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (CE110001028), the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CE170100023), the Australian Research Council's Discovery project: Tackling Atmospheric Chemistry Grand Challenges in the Southern Hemisphere (DP160101598) and the Dr Albert Shimmins Memorial Fund (through the University of Melbourne).