Not Driving During COVID-19 Lockdowns Didn’t Do Much To Help Slow Climate Change

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With other researchers, they calculated how 10 different greenhouse gases and air pollutants changed between February and June 2020 in 123 countries.

They found that the drop off peaked in April, with CO2, nitrogen oxides and other emissions falling between 10-30% globally, mainly due to declines in surface transport.

But this new work shows that some of the declines in greenhouse gases actually cancelled each other out in terms of warming.

Nitrogen oxides from transport normally have a warming impact in the atmosphere.

While they went down by 30%, they were matched by a drop in sulphur dioxide, which mainly comes from the burning of coal.

Emissions of this gas help aerosols to form, which reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet.

This balancing out, combined with the temporary nature of the pandemic restrictions, mean the impact on warming by 2030 will hardly be felt.

“Although temporary changes can help, you need to reduce CO2 permanently to make a dent in global warming,” said Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds.