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Published October 14, 2020 | Supplemental Material + Published + Erratum
Journal Article Open

Near-real-time monitoring of global CO₂ emissions reveals the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting human activities, and in turn energy use and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Here we present daily estimates of country-level CO2 emissions for different sectors based on near-real-time activity data. The key result is an abrupt 8.8% decrease in global CO₂ emissions (−1551 Mt CO₂) in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The magnitude of this decrease is larger than during previous economic downturns or World War II. The timing of emissions decreases corresponds to lockdown measures in each country. By July 1st, the pandemic's effects on global emissions diminished as lockdown restrictions relaxed and some economic activities restarted, especially in China and several European countries, but substantial differences persist between countries, with continuing emission declines in the U.S. where coronavirus cases are still increasing substantially.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 09 June 2020; Accepted 17 September 2020; Published 14 October 2020. ZL acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 71874097 and 41921005), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (JQ19032), and Qiushi Foundation. CB is supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (71725005), Beijing Outstanding Scientist Program (BJJWZYJH01201910027031). N.Z. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71822402 and 91746112) and National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC0213600). P.G. is thankful to Cyrus Tang foundation and Delos LLC. Asia for donations to support his research at Tsinghua University. M.M.L. is thankful to The Science Fund for Creative Research Groups "Environmental Risk Management (ERM)" granted by NSFC (71921003). H.Z. and C.K. are thankful to National High-End Think Tank Construction Project of National Governance and Global Governance Institute of Tsinghua University (2020WTF044). X.Y. is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0603802). Y.L. was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71761147001), This research is partially supported by Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (2020Z99CFG012). Authors acknowledge Paul O. Wennberg for insightful comments that helped improve this paper and Jingjing Chen and Qi Pan for the help of data collection. Data availability: All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article (data available at https://www.carbonmonitor.org or https://www.carbonmonitor.org.cn). AOD from MODIS: https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/products/MOD04_L2/ NO2 from OMI: http://www.temis.nl/airpollution/no2col/no2regioomimonth_qa.php XCO2 from GOSAT: https://data2.gosat.nies.go.jp/GosatDataArchiveService/usr/download/DownloadPage/view. Code availability: All code generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. These authors contributed equally: Zhu Liu, Philippe Ciais, Zhu Deng. Author Contributions: Z.L. and P.C. designed the research, Z.D. coordinated the data processing. Z.L., P.C., Z.D., R.L., S.J.D., S.F., B.Z., D.C., X.D., B.Z., R.G., P.K., T.S., C.L., P.H., Y.Wang, X.Y., Y.W., Y.L., H.Z., Z.C., Y.Wu, Runtao G., T.H., J.X., O.B., E.B., F.C., K.T., H.Z., C.K. contributed to data collecting, analysis, Z.L., P.C., Z.D., R.L., S.J.D., S.F., B.Z., D.C., X.D., B.Z., R.G., P.K., T.S., C.L., P.H., Y.Wang, X.Y., Y.W., Y.L., H.Z., Z.C., Y.Wu, Runtao G., T.H., J.X., O.B., E.B., F.C., K.T., Y.W., H.Z., C.K., N.Z., B.C., F.X., M.L., F.M., Y.L., Q.Z., D.G., P.G., D.M., K.H. and H.J.S. contributed to paper writing. Authors declare no competing interests. Peer review information: Nature Communications thanks Daniel Moran, Thomas Wiedmann, and Yoshiki Yamagata for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Errata

Liu, Z., Ciais, P., Deng, Z. et al. Author Correction: Near-real-time monitoring of global CO2 emissions reveals the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nat Commun 11, 6292 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20254-5

Attached Files

Published - s41467-020-18922-7.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2020_18922_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Erratum - s41467-020-20254-5.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023