Lockdown carbon drop ‘a tiny blip’
Aslowdown in industrial activity linked to the coronavirus pandemic has cut emissions of pollutants and heat-trapping greenhouse gases, but hasn’t reduced their record levels in the atmosphere, the United Nations weather agency said yesterday.
The World Meteorological Organisation pointed to a recordsetting surge of carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, but warned that any reduction in levels as a result of a pandemicrelated industrial slowdownwill take years to materialise. The organisation also said this can best be achieved if countries are able to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
“The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph. Weneed a sustained flattening of the curve,”
Wmosecretary-general Petteri Taalas said yesterday after releasing the latest edition of the organisation's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. “The Covid-19 pandemic is not a solution for climate change.”
Wmocited estimates from the Global Carbon Project indicating that daily carbon dioxide emissions could have fallen by as muchas 17 per cent worldwide during the peak of the lockdown periodwhen people inmany countries were forced to stay home. But figures for the whole year remain unclear, andwmo said preliminary estimates indicate a reduction in annual global emissions of between 4.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent.
The lockdown has cut emissions ofmanypollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. But the change inco
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concentrations— the result of cumulative past and current emissions— is in fact no bigger than the normal year-to-year fluctuations in the carbon cycle and in the amount of carbon being soaked up by vegetation and oceans.
“There has been a slight plateau in the use of carbon, which is a slightly positive thing,” Taalas told a video news conference, saying removing it from the atmosphere is “a very slow process”.
Wmosaid carbon-dioxide levels spiked again in 2019 to what Taalas called a “record rate of increase”, rising to a concentration of 410 parts per million just four years after topping400parts permillion.
— AP