Pandemic vs Climate ! How COVID 19 impacts air quality

Web Desk

30th Mar, 2020. 09:48 am
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Pandemic vs Climate!

Despite of the awful and disturbing numbers of death due to deadly coronavirus globally, there is another impact of the pandemic that can be seen from the space, and that is a big drop in air pollution.

When we see Pandemic vs Climate, Lockdowns causing local air pollution to improve and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well.

Straits Times in its article Coronavirus crisis helps clear the air on climate and pollution , writes that the drop in air pollution could well save lives and it also buys the planet a little bit more time in fighting the climate emergency.

It’s a side benefit that has revealed in stark terms the polluting nature of fossil fuel-driven economies and what a cleaner and greener future might be like. But it shouldn’t take a pandemic to remind us of this.

During February, Nasa and European Space Agency pollution monitoring satellites detected significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over China. The noxious gas is emitted by motor vehicles, power plants and industrial facilities and is a measure of industrial activity.

The drop in NO2 pollution was first apparent near Wuhan, but soon spread across the country.

“This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” Dr Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, said in a recent note on Nasa’s website.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported last Saturday that air quality improved during the January to February period in more than 330 cities monitored by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The average PM2.5 density, a key indicator of air pollution, also decreased by 13.1 per cent from a year ago during the two-month period.