Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 118, Issue 46, Pages -Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2109481118
Keywords
COVID-19; air quality; greenhouse gases; earth system; mitigation
Categories
Funding
- Keck Institute for Space Studies
- NIWA (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd.) through Aotearoa New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Strategic Science Investment Fund
- NASA
- NASA [NNX17AE15G, 80NSSC18K0689, 80NSSC20K1122, 80NSSC21K0508]
- NASA Carbon Monitoring System Grant [80NSSC20K0006]
- NASA Aura Science Team Program [19-AURAST19-0044]
- NSF RAPID Grant [2030049]
- NSF [OCE-1752724, OCE-1948664, OCE-1948624]
- Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the Uni-versity of California Berkeley
- Northern Arizona University startup funds
- University of California Institute of Transportation Studies
- California Air Resources Board, NASA Science Mission Directorate/Earth Science Division
- JPL Earth Science and Technology Directorate
- JPL OCO-2 Grant [JPL.1613918]
- NASA OCO science team program
- NASA [1002814, NNX17AE15G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [2030049] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have led to significant changes in atmospheric composition, particularly impacting greenhouse gases despite reductions in anthropogenic activity. The response of greenhouse gases to decreased emissions differed from that of ozone due to spatial and temporal variability in chemical regimes worldwide.
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 NOx emissions. Second, the response of O3 to decreased NOx 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
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