User:Alvarezyusi/COVID-19 Impact on Climate Change

Human activity has caused environmental degradation to our planet for centuries. Reverse the roles now and there is a global pandemic that has caused the human species to refrain from leaving their homes. As millions of people have stopped leaving their homes in efforts of governments controlling the virus, this causes changes like travel restrictions and less cars on the street and carbon emissions globally.

Climate change is an adjustment of the climate of our planet. Often times its referred to as the the increase of temperatures globally of the earth. As our planet continues to increase in temperatures due to greenhouse gasses, our glaciers keep melting and cause a rise in our sea levels. Our global sea level rise has increased 2.6 inches above the 1996 average. Approximately 40% of the worlds population lives in coastal areas where sea level rise plays a role. In various forms, human activity has caused environmental degradation or often known as anthropogenic impact. A pandemic would cause the public to stay in their homes and remain on lock-down for protection. This would essentially cause a decrease in pollutants such as CO2, and marine pollution and our environment will begin to slowly flourish again. There would be a rise in vegetation and animals roaming places freely. This would be for the time being of the lock-down.

In cities such as China, the air pollution decreased tremendously and the smog from the skies mostly cleared up. The NASA and ESA have been monitoring how the Nitrogen dioxide gasses dropped significantly over the period of time of the Corona virus. Evidence shows that the relation to the economic slowdown from the virus has drastically dropped the pollution levels especially in cities like Wuhan, China by 25%. The NASA uses a ozone monitoring instrument (OMI) to analyze and observe the ozone layer and pollutants such as NO2, aerosols and others. This instrument has helped the NASA process and interpret the data coming in due to the lock-downs worldwide. According to NASA scientists, the drop in NO2 pollution began in Wuhan, China and slowly spread to the rest of the world. The drop was also very drastic because the virus coincided with the same time of year as the lunar year celebrations in most of Asia and China. For this festival, factories and businesses close for the last week of January begging February to celebrate the lunar year festival. The drop in NO2 in China does not mean that the air quality is healthy, it means that there was a decrease in the nitrogen dioxide in the air, there is still other pollutants in the air such as aerosol emissions.

Although the drop in pollution is a positive thing for our planet, we must keep in mind as we transition back to our normal daily lives that we have to keep trying to slow down climate change and avoid contributing to our carbon footprints.