How pandemic lockdowns cleaned the air but resulted in a warmer planet
Earth spiked a bit of a fever in 2020, partly because of cleaner air from pandemic lockdowns, a new study has found.
For a short time, temperatures in some places in the eastern United States, Russia and China were as much as 0.3 to 0.37 degrees Celsius warmer. That’s due to less soot and sulfate particles from car exhaust and burning coal, which normally cool the atmosphere temporarily by reflecting the sun’s heat, Tuesday’s study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reported.
