Global Daily CO$_2$ emissions for the year 2020
Zhu Liu, Zhu Deng, Philippe Ciais, Jianguang Tan, Biqing Zhu, Steven, J. Davis, Robbie Andrew, Olivier Boucher, Simon Ben Arous, Pep Canadel, Xinyu, Dou, Pierre Friedlingstein, Pierre Gentine, Rui Guo, Chaopeng Hong, Robert B., Jackson, Daniel M. Kammen, Piyu Ke

TL;DR
This paper provides the first comprehensive daily CO₂ emission dataset for 2020, revealing a 5.4% decline due to COVID-19, with emissions rebounding towards 2019 levels by year's end, highlighting challenges for climate mitigation.
Contribution
It introduces a detailed daily CO₂ emissions dataset for 2020 derived from inventory and real-time data, offering new insights into pandemic-related emission changes.
Findings
Global emissions declined by 5.4% in 2020.
Emissions recovered towards 2019 levels from late April.
Lockdowns caused only a temporary 5.4% decline.
Abstract
The diurnal cycle CO emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production reflect seasonality, weather conditions, working days, and more recently the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, for the first time we provide a daily CO emission dataset for the whole year of 2020 calculated from inventory and near-real-time activity data (called Carbon Monitor project: https://carbonmonitor.org). It was previously suggested from preliminary estimates that did not cover the entire year of 2020 that the pandemics may have caused more than 8% annual decline of global CO emissions. Here we show from detailed estimates of the full year data that the global reduction was only 5.4% (-1,901 MtCO, ). This decrease is 5 times larger than the annual emission drop at the peak of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. However, global CO emissions gradually recovered towards 2019…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCOVID-19 impact on air quality · Air Quality and Health Impacts · Climate Change and Health Impacts
