In March 2020 the England Data Unit and the Shared Data Unit worked with the Local Democracy Reporting Service to report on delays to plans to reduce high-polluting vehicles travelling around UK cities due to the coronavirus crisis.
We looked at air pollution data and found that levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) had fallen since people were told to work from home the previous week.
The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to news organisations across the media industry, as part of a partnership between the BBC and the News Media Association. Stories generated by the partnership included:
- Warwick: The Courier: Air pollution has fallen across Leamington since people's movements started being restricted because of Covid-19 26 March 2020
- Portsmouth: The News: Portsmouth sees highest drop in nitrous dioxide pollution in England during lockdown 27 March 2020
- Eastbourne Herald: Air pollution in Eastbourne drops during outbreak 27 March 2020
- Lincolnshire Live: Air pollution in Lincoln down by a FIFTH as people stay at home amid coronavirus 27 March 2020
- Glasgow Live: Dangerous air pollutants falling as people stay home to beat coronavirus 28 March 2020
- Manchester Evening News: Dangerous air pollutants falling as people stay home during the lockdown 29 March 2020
- Grimsby Live: Air pollution in Scunthorpe drops by a third as people stay at home during coronavirus pandemic 30 March 2020
- Edinburgh Evening News: Edinburgh sees more than 50 per cent drop in air pollution as lockdown lowers amount of traffic 30 March 2020
- Wigan Today: Lockdown life in Wigan has much cleaner air 31 March 2020
- Derbyshire Live: Dramatic fall in dangerous pollution as Derby empties of traffic 31 March 2020
- Leeds Live: The huge unintended consequence coronavirus is having on Leeds 1 April 2020
- Somerset Live: No decision made on whether Bath clean air zone will go ahead 2 April 2020
- Bristol Live: What will happen with Bristol and Bath's clean air zones? Will they still go ahead? 3 April 2020
- South Wales Argus: Pollution falls since coronavirus lockdown 4 April 2020
- Bournemouth Daily Echo: Pollution levels are dropping during the lockdown 5 April 2020
- CSV: Daily mean nitrogen dioxide levels, March 2019 to 2020, part 1 and part 2
- CSV: Data cleaned from wide to long, with column for city and column for reading
- CSV: Data filtered to March 2019 and March 2020 only
- XLSX: Analysis of March figures
- Spokesman, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Councillor Tom Hayes, cabinet member for Zero Carbon Oxford
- Judith Blake, Council leader, Leeds City Council
- Grouped bar chart: Air pollution in cities, March 2019 vs March 2020
- R script: combining, cleaning, filtering and visualising data for all cities (Anna Khoo)
- R notebook: combining, cleaning, filtering and exporting data for clean air zone cities (Paul Bradshaw)
You can find all coronavirus-related stories by the BBC data units tagged 'coronavirus' here