Abstract
Governments restricted mobility and effectively shuttered much of the
global economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Six San Francisco
Bay Area counties were the first region in the United States to issue a
“shelter-in-place” order asking non-essential workers to stay home.
Here we use CO2 observations from 35 Berkeley Environment, Air-quality
and CO2 Network (BEACO2N) nodes and an atmospheric transport model to
quantify changes in urban CO2 emissions due to the order. We infer
hourly emissions at 900-m spatial resolution for 6 weeks before and 6
weeks during the order. We observe a 28% decrease in anthropogenic CO2
emissions during the order and show this decrease is primarily due to
changes in traffic (-44%) with pronounced changes to daily and weekly
cycles; non-traffic emissions show small changes (-8%). These findings
provide a glimpse into a future with reduced CO2 emissions through
electrification of vehicles. (submitted to GRL: 2020-07-24 16:49:19)