Local and transboundary impacts of PM2.5 sources identified in Seoul during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak

Countries in Northeast Asia have been regulating PM₂.₅ sources and studying their local and transboundary origins since PM₂.₅ causes severe impacts on public health and economic losses. However, the separation of local and transboundary impacts is not fully realized because it is impossible to change air pollutant emissions from multiple countries experimentally. Exceptionally, the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak (January–March 2020) provided a cross-country experiment to separate each impact of PM₂.₅ sources identified in Seoul, a downwind area of China. We evaluated the contributions of PM₂.₅ sources compared to 2019 using dispersion normalized positive matrix factorization (DN-PMF) during three meteorological episodes. Episodes 1 and 2 revealed transboundary impacts and were related to reduced anthropogenic emissions and accumulated primary pollutants in Northeast China. Anthropogenic emissions, except for the residential sector, decreased, but primary air pollutants accumulated by residential coal combustion enhanced secondary aerosol formation. Thus, the contributions of sulfate and secondary nitrate increased in Seoul during episode 1 but then decreased maximally with other primary sources (biomass burning, district heating and incineration, industrial sources, and oil combustion) during episode 2 under meteorological conditions favorable to long-range transport. Local impact was demonstrated by atmospheric stagnation during episode 3. Meteorological condition unfavorable to local dispersion elevated the contributions of mobile and coal combustion and further contributed to PM₂.₅ high concentration events (HCE). Our study separates the local and transboundary impacts and highlights that cooperations in Northeast Asia on secondary aerosol formation and management of local sources are necessary.