Regional impacts of COVID-19 on carbon dioxide detected worldwide from space

Brad Weir; David Crisp; Christopher W O'Dell; Sourish Basu; Abhishek Chatterjee; Jana Kolassa; Tomohiro Oda; Steven Pawson; Benjamin Poulter; Zhen Zhang; Philippe Ciais; Steven J Davis; Zhu Liu; Lesley E Ott

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abf9415

Regional impacts of COVID-19 on carbon dioxide detected worldwide from space

Sci Adv. 2021 Nov 5;7(45):eabf9415. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abf9415. Epub 2021 Nov 3.

Authors

Brad Weir^{1

2}, David Crisp³, Christopher W O'Dell⁴, Sourish Basu^{2

5}, Abhishek Chatterjee^{1

2}, Jana Kolassa^{2

6}, Tomohiro Oda^{1

2

7

8

9}, Steven Pawson², Benjamin Poulter¹⁰, Zhen Zhang⁸, Philippe Ciais¹¹, Steven J Davis¹², Zhu Liu¹³, Lesley E Ott²

Affiliations

¹ Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, USA.
² Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
³ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁴ Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
⁵ Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁶ Science and Systems and Applications Incorporated, Lanham, MD, USA.
⁷ The Earth from Space Institute (EfSI), Universities Space Research Association, 7178 Columbia Gateway Dr, Columbia, MD 21046, USA.
⁸ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, 4254 Stadium Dr, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁹ Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
¹⁰ Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
¹¹ Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Gif sur Yvette, France.
¹² Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
¹³ Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Activity reductions in early 2020 due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic led to unprecedented decreases in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Despite their record size, the resulting atmospheric signals are smaller than and obscured by climate variability in atmospheric transport and biospheric fluxes, notably that related to the 2019–2020 Indian Ocean Dipole. Monitoring CO₂ anomalies and distinguishing human and climatic causes thus remain a new frontier in Earth system science. We show that the impact of short-term regional changes in fossil fuel emissions on CO₂ concentrations was observable from space. Starting in February and continuing through May, column CO₂ over many of the world’s largest emitting regions was 0.14 to 0.62 parts per million less than expected in a pandemic-free scenario, consistent with reductions of 3 to 13% in annual global emissions. Current spaceborne technologies are therefore approaching levels of accuracy and precision needed to support climate mitigation strategies with future missions expected to meet those needs.