Now, turning back the clocks on emissions in the last few years is unique to the Middle East, as the rest of the world continues on the upward trend.
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In Iran, global sanctions precipitated an economic downturn that coincided with plummeting levels of pollutants after 2010. So the researchers thought the level of emissions there would provide a decent proxy of the economic activity in the region. Four million have left the country to areas such as neighboring Lebanon where emissions rose by 20 to 30 percent in 2014 alone. “However, [the Middle East] is the only region where this pollution trajectory was interrupted around 2010 and followed by a strong decline”, said Professor Jos Lelieveld, lead author from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Meanwhile, the cities Syrians have gone to seek refuge – like Beirut and Tripoli, in Lebanon, have seen increases in nitrogen dioxide levels. Not coincidentally, the areas under control of ISIS registered the steepest decline in emissions.
In armed conflicts countless people lose their livelihood if not their life, and war also brings the economy to its knees. Most strikingly, the researchers wrote, a 50% drop in oil exports since 2010 reduced sulfur dioxide emissions over the Persian Gulf, “in particular near the main Iranian oil tanker terminal Jazireh Ye at Kharg Island”.
Researchers say that in countries like Syria and Iraq, levels of air pollutants have fallen dramatically.
Levels of nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas produced by vehicle engines and power plants than can contribute to climate change, grew rapidly in cities like Damascus, Aleppo, Tehran and Cairo in the early years of the 2000s until they experienced a drop-off around the beginning of the following decade. They noted, however, that “it is tragic that some of the observed recent negative NO2 trends are associated with humanitarian catastrophes”. In Kerbala, a city south of Baghdad predominantly inhabited by Shiites, it even rose by about ten percent per year.
Similarly, emissions in parts of Iraq have declined since 2013 in places like Tikrit and Samarra after they were occupied by the Islamic State, according to the study.
Researchers believe that the drastic changes in nitrogen oxide emissions in Iran result from the sanctions that were considerably tightened by the United Nations in 2010. Emissions have also dropped off in Baghdad, which has weathered a series of deadly attacks but remained out of the hands of Islamic State.
The economic crisis in Greece can also be read from changes in nitrogen oxide emissions.
Some areas increased emissions by inheriting populations from nearby countries. Nitrogen oxides, and nitrogen dioxide in particular, can cause respiratory diseases.
Air pollution is partly influenced by the levels of nitrogen oxides (NO2) in the atmosphere, which are emitted by fossil fuels and other environmental events that involve combustion.
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A similar trend reversal is identified in Egypt around the time of the government’s overthrow in 2011. Until now, long-term predictions for nitrogen oxide values have often been related to the economic status of a country or its carbon dioxide emissions. Only then did the economy begin to slow down, and then shrink, resulting in a parallel drop in energy use.
