The study on regional-scale reductions of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that there was emission reductions of approximately 8% in March 2020 and 10% in April 2020 in East China, and somewhat lower reductions for the other months in 2020. However, results show considerable month-to-month variability and significant differences across the ensemble of satellite data products analysed, indicating that it is challenging to reliably detect and to accurately quantify the emission reduction with current satellite data sets.

Something that will vastly reduce the difficulty of using current satellite data to measure anthropogenic emissions shown in this study, is an upcoming satellite mission known as CO2M or Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring, and also known as Sentinel-7. CO2M will be a constellation of two satellites that will carry a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activity. It will be the first of it's kind to specifically measure anthropogenic soures of CO₂.

In this 2nd video on Carbon Dioxide (CO₂), Michael explains the results of the COVID-19 study in detail.

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Featured Educator

• Dr Michael Buchwitz, Senior Scientist, University of Bremen

Thanks to all of the contributing scientists for self-filming during the COVID-19 lockdown.

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