No one should be surprised to learn that one of the major pollutants -- nitrogen dioxide -- is created daily by none other than us human beings, especially by our cars and factories. What is interesting is that we are responsible for so much of it!
NASA released a telling study last month. They can model just how much pollution is expected in the coming year, based on past years, assuming human behavior won’t be changing much. So looking at 2018 and 2019 can pretty well forecast pollution hot spots in 2020.
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Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down in March and human patterns DID change, especially automobile and air traffic. So you’d expected less pollution. Simply take the 2020 pollution forecast and then look at how much pollution really occurred and that tells you the decrease (more or less) due to the shutdown. Simple subtraction.
The results
Take a look at Europe’s pollution forecast versus what actually was observed and you’ll see a 60% decrease in pollution. The less red, the less pollution.
Pretty remarkable and China was the same: a 60% reduction in pollution. Here in the United States tells the same story. I grabbed these from the NASA video:
You can see from the above versus below pics, that the observed pollution in March 2020 was down anywhere from 20% - 50% against what was expected.
You can see the entire NASA study and video here, which is a great explainer on all this. The bottom line is that we are the culprits when it comes to dirty air.
We can learn from even the most horrific of events.
Frank