Abstract
Besides the global crisis of the novel COVID-19 outbreak, we have presented the other side towards an environmental perspective. Due to the economic shutdown of major cities, the novel COVID-19 outbreak has significantly influenced air quality in the atmosphere and also affected the tropospheric refraction on Global Navigation Satellite System GNSS signal propagation in the horizontally stratified column. We suggest that GNSS signal propagation and variation in Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) in the tropospheric column can be used as a proxy for the pollution-monitoring tool in the future. Although we have presented a case study from mainland China, the hypothesis can be tested globally.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Prof. Harsh Gupta for his invitation to contribute to this novel project of JGSI. We also thank Geoff Blewitt, Bill Hammond, Roland Burgmann, and V. K. Gahalaut for their helpful discussion on this topic, which significantly improves the quality of the present work. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which significantly improved the quality of the present work. NO2 content in the tropospheric column has archived from OMI/Aura Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Total and Tropospheric Column 1-orbit L2 swath (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/OMNO2_003). Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) gridded data can be archived from https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/mod08.php. Measurements of ZTD of respective GNSS time series can be archived from http://geodesy.unr.edu/NGLStationPages/gpsnetmap/GPSNetMap.html. All the other information used in the present work is available openly in the public domain and presented in the text/figures.
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Kundu, B., Panda, D., Vissa, N.K. et al. “Novel 2019 Coronavirus Outbreak” through the Eyes of GNSS Signal. J Geol Soc India 98, 83–87 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12594-022-1933-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12594-022-1933-1