Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are set to drop by up to seven percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but even this dramatic decline -- the sharpest since WWII -- would barely dent long-term global warming, researchers reported Tuesday.
In early April, coronavirus lockdowns led to a 17 per cent reduction worldwide in carbon pollution compared to the same period last year, according to the first peer-reviewed assessment of the pandemic's impact on CO2 emissions, published in Nature Climate Change.
"Population confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions," said lead author Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.
If the global economy recovers to pre-pandemic conditions by mid-June -- an unlikely scenario -- CO2 emissions in 2020 are projected to drop only four percent, Le Quere and her team calculated.
On April 7 -- the day global CO2 pollution dropped the most -- emissions from land transport accounted for more than 40 percent of the decrease, while industry, electricity generation, and aviation accounted for 25, 19 and 10 percent, respectively.
