Los Angeles Air Quality Campaign - 2020

LAAQC was an air quality campaign done on Caltech’s campus in spring and summer 2020 to study the impact of anomalously low traffic resulting from the ‘shelter at home’ restrictions put in place to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Reductions in vehicular emissions have been occurring over the past several decades and the spring 2020 data allow us to see into the future where these emissions are 30-50% lower than in 2019. Thus, these observations provide clues for how air quality is likely to change over the next few years and whether current air quality regulations will enable the residents of the basin to finally breath clean air all year round.