Societal shifts due to COVID-19 reveal large-scale complexities and feedbacks between atmospheric chemistry and climate change.
Joshua L. Laughner,Jessica L. Neu,David S. Schimel,Paul O. Wennberg,Kelley C. Barsanti,Kevin W. Bowman,Abhishek Chatterjee,Abhishek Chatterjee,Bart E Croes,Bart E Croes,Helen Fitzmaurice,Daven K. Henze,Jinsol Kim,Eric A. Kort,Zhu Liu,Kazuyuki Miyazaki,Alexander J. Turner,Alexander J. Turner,Alexander J. Turner,Susan C. Anenberg,Jeremy Avise,Hansen Cao,David Crisp,Joost A. de Gouw,Annmarie Eldering,John C. Fyfe,Daniel L. Goldberg,Kevin R. Gurney,Sina Hasheminassab,Francesca M. Hopkins,Cesunica E. Ivey,Dylan B. A. Jones,Junjie Liu,Nicole S. Lovenduski,Randall V. Martin,Galen A. McKinley,Lesley Ott,Benjamin Poulter,Muye Ru,Muye Ru,Stanley P. Sander,Neil C. Swart,Yuk L. Yung,Zhao-Cheng Zeng +43 more
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TLDR
The COVID-19 global pandemic and associated government lockdowns dramatically altered human activity, providing a window into how changes in individual behavior, enacted en masse, impact atmospheric composition as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The COVID-19 global pandemic and associated government lockdowns dramatically altered human activity, providing a window into how changes in individual behavior, enacted en masse, impact atmospheric composition. The resulting reductions in anthropogenic activity represent an unprecedented event that yields a glimpse into a future where emissions to the atmosphere are reduced. Furthermore, the abrupt reduction in emissions during the lockdown periods led to clearly observable changes in atmospheric composition, which provide direct insight into feedbacks between the Earth system and human activity. While air pollutants and greenhouse gases share many common anthropogenic sources, there is a sharp difference in the response of their atmospheric concentrations to COVID-19 emissions changes, due in large part to their different lifetimes. Here, we discuss several key takeaways from modeling and observational studies. First, despite dramatic declines in mobility and associated vehicular emissions, the atmospheric growth rates of greenhouse gases were not slowed, in part due to decreased ocean uptake of CO2 and a likely increase in CH4 lifetime from reduced NO x emissions. Second, the response of O3 to decreased NO x emissions showed significant spatial and temporal variability, due to differing chemical regimes around the world. Finally, the overall response of atmospheric composition to emissions changes is heavily modulated by factors including carbon-cycle feedbacks to CH4 and CO2, background pollutant levels, the timing and location of emissions changes, and climate feedbacks on air quality, such as wildfires and the ozone climate penalty.read more
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Wetland emission and atmospheric sink changes explain methane growth in 2020.
Shushi Peng,Xin Lin,Rona Thompson,Yi Xi,Gang Liu,Didier Hauglustaine,Xin Lan,Benjamin Poulter,Michel Ramonet,Marielle Saunois,Yi Yin,Zhen Zhang,Bo Zheng,Philippe Ciais +13 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors quantify changes in methane sources and in its atmospheric sink in 2020 compared with 2019, and find that globally, total anthropogenic emissions decreased by 1.2 ± 0.4 parts per billion per year in 2020 despite a probable decrease in anthropogenic methane emissions during COVID-19 lockdowns.
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Global Endeavors to Address the Health Effects of Urban Air Pollution.
TL;DR: The Altmetric Attention Score as mentioned in this paper is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online, and it is calculated based on the Alt-metric attention score and how the score is calculated.
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Attribution of the 2020 surge in atmospheric methane by inverse analysis of GOSAT observations
Zhen Qu,Daniel J. Jacob,Yuzhong Zhi Zhang,Lu Shen,D. J. Varon,Xiao Lu,Tia R. Scarpelli,A. Anthony Bloom,John Worden,Robert J. Parker +9 more
TL;DR: In this article , the authors conduct a global inverse analysis of 2019-2020 satellite observations of atmospheric methane to analyze the combination of sources and sinks driving this surge, finding that 31 Tg a−1 increased from 2019 to 2020, representing a 36 Tg −1 forcing on the methane budget away from steady state.
Journal ArticleDOI
Climate change and COVID-19: Interdisciplinary perspectives from two global crises
TL;DR: In this article , the authors argue that despite being different in nature, neither crisis can be effectively mitigated without considering their interdependencies, and they suggest that governments should work collaboratively to develop durable and adjustable strategies in line with long-term, global decarbonisation targets, promote renewable energy resources, integrate climate change into environmental policies, prioritise climate-smart agriculture and local food systems, and ensure public and ecosystem health.
Posted ContentDOI
Towards sector-based attribution using intra-city variations in satellite-based emission ratios between CO2 and CO
Dien Wu,Junjie Liu,Paul O. Wennberg,Paul I. Palmer,Robert M. Nelson,Matthäus Kiel,Annmarie Eldering +6 more
TL;DR: In this article , the authors extended an established emission estimate approach to arrive at spatially-resolved ERs based on retrieved column-averaged CO2 (XCO2) from the Snapshot Area Mapping (SAM) mode of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) and column averaged CO from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI).
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TL;DR: In this article, the effects of human activity on air quality were examined during lockdown periods in China, Europe, and North America using a combination of satellite data, simulation, and ground-based observations.
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