Summary A positive outcome of the Coronavirus lockdown is that it created a grand “natural experiment”. This fortuitous circumstance can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of human actions on the environment. A good example is air pollution. When governments all around the world restricted movements to help stem the rapid […]

Where art and science collide: The Space and Satellites Artist Residency exhibition at Edinburgh’s Inspace   Full text of article in The Scotsman, 8th August 2020   Scotsman Article NB. The air quality data described in the article derives from The Scottish Air Quality Database, a project that Ricardo delivers on behalf of the Scottish […]

Summary The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly influenced almost every aspect of daily life, including road traffic patterns and transportation systems. Daily travel behaviour in cities all across thje world has been entirely reshaped due to COVID-19. In Scotland traffic volume started to decline well ahead of the main stay-at-home order of March 23. By the […]

Air pollution plunges by up to 80% in Scotland’s city centres during the Covid pandemic   Summary During the COVID-19 lockdown huge reductions in nitrogen oxide pollutants (up to 80% for NO, 66% for NO2) took place across Scotland’s cities and towns. Particularly pronounced declines are found for sites normally dense with road traffic. In […]

St John’s Road pollution Jan to April 2020: removing local meteorological effects.   First attempt at ‘deweathering‘ St John’s Road pollution Jan to April 2020, i.e removing local meteorological effects. Wind speed and direction plus temporal effects (daily, weekday, seasonal cycles) can account for 64% of the variation. The 3D plot aims to improve on […]

Environmental impact of the Covid19 lockdown on air pollution – a short video Summary    Video produced as part of the EVERYONE project charting NO2 pollution across Scotland during the Covid19 lockdown. The many features to be seen in the video are caused by a combination of anthropogenic emissions, meterorlogical events and the COVID-19 outbreak. […]

The St. John’s Road air pollution data has been turned into a video and set to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz Of The Flowers   As part of the EVERYONE project coordinated by Stacey Hunter  the St John’s Road air pollution data, described on my previous blog pages, has been incorporated into a video (1:38 […]

Free Zoom webinar (Thursday 9th July 16:00 British Summer Time)   During Covid I began blogging about geo-statistics, predicting Covid deaths in countries all around the world, and UK air-pollution. E.g. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/roythompson/2020/05/04/covid-19-and-the-edinburgh-congestion-charge/ ‘EVERYONE: Making data tangible through material cultures’. One of my blog page images is to be exploited by a group of artists who […]

COVID-19, ‘big data’ and rebound from lockdown. The Calcutta Cup (the oldest rugby rivalry in the world: Scotland vs. England)  helps validate Apple’s mobility product – a key potential forecaster for a safe exit from lockdown. Summary How is the rebound from the lockdown progressing in Scotland? That is, how rapidly are Scots starting to […]

Local air pollution update (10 June 2020). Summary The declines in pollution levels, as caused by the downturn in vehicle emissions during the COVID-19 lockdown, provide clear and direct examples of what might be possible in ultra-low emission zones of the future. Scottish network of continuous, ground-based monitoring sites Local air pollution continues to be […]