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‘Pollution cools the planet’: Pandemic-induced lockdowns RAISED global temp
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‘Pollution cools the planet’: Pandemic-induced lockdowns RAISED global temp
Contrary to many breathless headlines published throughout the pandemic extolling the benefits of lockdowns for the environment, the planet was actually warmer because of them, a new paper has found.
According to the latest research led by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the emission of airborne particles, or aerosols, that block incoming sunlight and send it back out into space, dropped significantly in industrialized nations around the globe, spurring a small, but significant rise in temperatures.
Emissions of aerosols dropped during the springtime lockdowns of 2020, in sync with the precipitous drop in major industrial activity across the globe, allowing more of the sun’s light to reach the Earth, raising temperatures in industrialized nations like the United States and Russia
“There was a big decline in emissions from the most polluting industries, and that had immediate, short-term effects on temperatures,” said NCAR scientist Andrew Gettelman, the study’s lead author.
“Pollution cools the planet, so it makes sense that pollution reductions would warm the planet.”
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