NASA finds short-term drop in carbon dioxide emissions from human activity during COVID-19 lockdowns
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels took a steep drop in the first months of the pandemic as worldwide lockdowns forced many people to stay home
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NASA researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide across the world due to emissions generated from human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the space agency said last week.
Using a combination of NASA satellites, atmospheric modeling and data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), scientists measured CO2 emissions during the pandemic from space.
Previous studies showed CO2 levels dropped slightly during worldwide lockdowns as human activity decreased significantly.
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"However, by combining OCO-2’s high-resolution data with modeling and data analysis tools from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), the team was able to narrow down which monthly changes were due to human activity and which were due to natural causes at a regional scale," NASA said. "This confirms previous estimates based on economic and human activity data."
The measurements showed that in the Northern Hemisphere, human-generated growth in CO2 concentrations dropped from February through May 2020 before rebounding that summer.
The findings are consistent with a global emissions decrease of 3% to 13% for the year.
As many people were forced to stay home during the pandemic, fewer vehicles on the road meant steep drops in greenhouse gases and pollutants being released into the atmosphere. However, a "steep drop" from CO2 needs to be put into context, said Lesley Ott, a research meteorologist at NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NASA researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) across the world during the COVID-19 pandemic as many vehicles stayed off the road amid worldwide lockdowns. (NASA / Fox News)
The gas can last in the atmosphere for up to a century after being released, meaning the drop in 2020 is a small part of the overall CO2 picture, she said.
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"Early in 2020, we saw fires in Australia that released CO2, we saw more uptake from plants over India, and we saw all these different influences mixed up," Ott said. "The challenge is to try to disentangle that and understand what all the different components were."