Political conflict between countries resulted in pollution decline, a study recently revealed by the Science Advances. Professor Jos Lelieveld of Max-Plank Institute claimed that there is indeed a significant decrease of air pollution on one area. "Apparently, there are economic and other societal factors, geopolitical factors that can have a strong impact on air pollution and this is what we see from space. And the resolution that we now have available from space really enables us to look at particular cities," he said.
The conclusion was made based on the results that were compared with the data from the World Bank and U.S. Energy Information Administration last 2010. They found that there is a dramatic reversal in Saudi Arabia and other countries with turmoil. This was made possible using a special device launched in space last 2004, called the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, which provides high-resolution satellite images to scout up different types of air pollution.
One of the most common types of air pollution is nitrogen oxide. These are commonly found on road traffics and energy-burning activities. In Iraq, for example, the seizing of the Islamic State caused a lot of people to move out of the country or city affected, thus decreasing air pollution trend. However, cities like Jordan and Lebanon have increased rates since these are the places most refugees were relocated.
The crisis in Greece also limited people from buying expensive fuel and in Athens, people are starting to use woods, plastic and other hazardous materials for a source of heat.
Hence, the study implies that the quality of air and political factors have indeed inflicted changes in the emission of nitrogen oxide. However, this trend has occurred since 2010 and is not used in projections of air pollution and climate change in the earlier years.
