The climate response to emissions reductions due to COVID-19: initial results from CovidMIP
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Many nations responded to the corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic by restricting travel and other activities during 2020, resulting in temporarily reduced emissions of CO2, other greenhouse gases and ozone and aerosol precursors. We present the initial results from a coordinated Intercomparison, CovidMIP, of Earth system model simulations which assess the impact on climate of these emissions reductions. 12 models performed multiple initial-condition ensembles to produce over 300 simulations spanning both initial condition and model structural uncertainty. We find model consensus on reduced aerosol amounts (particularly over southern and eastern Asia) and associated increases in surface shortwave radiation levels. However, any impact on near-surface temperature or rainfall during 2020–2024 is extremely small and is not detectable in this initial analysis. Regional analyses on a finer scale, and closer attention to extremes (especially linked to changes in atmospheric composition and air quality) are required to test the impact of COVID-19-related emission reductions on near-term climate.
Date Issued
2021-04-28
Date Acceptance
2021-02-15
Citation
Geophysical Research Letters, 2021, 48 (8)
ISSN
0094-8276
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume
48
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2021. Crown Copyright. © 2021. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada. This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000672324900006&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
aerosol optical depth
climate perturbation
CMIP6
COVID-19 emissions reductions
CovidMIP
earth system model
EARTH SYSTEM MODEL
EL-NINO
Geology
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
IMPACT
Physical Sciences
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Article Number
ARTN e2020GL091883
Date Publish Online
2021-03-10