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Climate Impacts of COVID-19 Induced Emission Changes
  • +2
  • Andrew Gettelman,
  • Robin Davies Lamboll,
  • Charles Bardeen,
  • Piers Forster,
  • Duncan Watson-Parris
Andrew Gettelman
National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Robin Davies Lamboll
Imperial College
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Charles Bardeen
National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
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Piers Forster
University of Leeds
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Duncan Watson-Parris
University of Oxford
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Abstract

The COVID19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in economic activity in 2020. We use estimates of emissions changes for 2020 in two Earth System Models (ESMs) to simulate the impacts of the COVID19 economic changes. Ensembles of nudged simulations are used to separate small signals from meteorological variability. Reductions in aerosol and precursor emissions, chiefly Black Carbon (BC) and sulfate (SO$_4$), led to reductions in total anthropogenic aerosol cooling through aerosol-cloud interactions. The average overall Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) peaks at +0.29$\pm$0.15 Wm$^{-2}$ in spring 2020. Changes in cloud properties are smaller than observed changes during 2020. Impacts of these changes on regional land surface temperature range up to +0.3K. The peak impact of these aerosol changes on global surface temperature is very small (+0.03K). However, the aerosol changes are the largest contribution to COVID19 emissions induced radiative forcing and temperature changes, dominating ozone, CO$_2$ and contrail effects.