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Has COVID affected climate change?

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NASA.

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We Asked a NASA Scientist.

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This is a question we actually get a lot because

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one of the first things that people notice
in terms of the environment

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during COVID was that
the air seemed to be a little bit cleaner.

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And when scientists started
looking at the data,

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we did see a decrease in air quality
pollutants like nitrogen dioxide.

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In some cases,
those decreases were as large as 30%.

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So pretty significant.

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But when we started looking more

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at greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide,
the gases that stay in the atmosphere

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a really long time and caused
climate change, we saw that the decreases

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were much more subtle, more on the order of 5 to 10%.

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That's because the shorter-lived air pollutants

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that are harmful to human health
are emitted more strongly from things

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like traffic, while the climate polluters,
like carbon dioxide,

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come from things like power plants.

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And during COVID, while we weren't driving
as much going into the office

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or meeting up with friends,
we were still heating our homes.

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We were still using air
conditioning during the summer.

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So those decreases in the gases
that caused climate change

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were much more subtle.

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So has COVID affected climate change?

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The answer is a little bit.

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We saw small decreases

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in emissions of greenhouse gases,
like carbon dioxide and methane,

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but they continued to build up in our
atmosphere much like in any other year.

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That means that we all have to continue
to work hard

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to reduce emissions of those gases

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if we really want to turn climate change around.

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We Asked a NASA Scientist.