The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic resulted in India imposing a nationwide lockdown on 22 March 2020, bringing all human activities to a complete halt. The current study focuses on the effect of lockdown on the abundance of atmospheric aerosols over Goa. The study focused on pre-lockdown, lockdown and period corresponding to lockdown in 2019. The AOD spectra depicted a decrease in the anthropogenically derived fine mode aerosols during the lockdown compared to the pre-lockdown period. Mean AOD(500) for prelockdown and lockdown periods were 0.43 +/- 0.19 and 0.53 +/- 0.11 respectively. The higher AOD(500) during lockdown was due to an increase in naturally derived coarse mode aerosols, which is further confirmed with the lower Angstrom exponent values (1.04 +/- 0.11). The mean black carbon mass concentration for the respective periods were 1990.45 +/- 470.87 ng m(-3), and 1109.71 +/- 218.33 ng m(-3), and the mean atmospheric forcing during the respective periods were 25.13 +/- 5.72 W m(-2), 27.31 +/- 3.71 W m(-2) and 30.81 +/- 5.59 W m(-2) respectively.
