Lockdown effect on carbon monoxide concentration over Malaysia and Indonesia

Abstract

An increase in Indonesian forest fires has infuriated Malaysia and Indonesia, where residents are inhaling smoke from peat and trees burned hundreds of miles away. The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused carbon monoxide (CO) emissions decreased seen over Malaysia and Indonesia regions. The main objective of this study is to investigate the CO distribution over Malaysia and Indonesia, within the period of January 2011 to December 2021. The impact of lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 to CO concentration over Malaysia and Indonesia also was reviewed. This study utilizes MERRA-2 dataset provided by Giovanni interface. Five areas were found to be affected the most during the study period which is Kuala Lumpur, Jambi, Riau, Palembang, and Jakarta. Carbon monoxide concentration over the studied region exhibits a strong seasonality showing maximum value in dry season (July to October). September 2019 is found to have the highest trend of CO concentration affected Jambi region. As COVID-19 pandemic hit the whole world by end of year 2019, all the studied regions shown the decreasing trend after September 2019 and no high peak was observed during dry season (July to October) in 2020 and 2021. This is the combined effect of wetter dry season and an impact of lockdown implemented by government of Malaysia and Indonesia.