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Observed impacts of COVID-19 on urban CO2 emissions
  • +7
  • Alexander Turner,
  • Jinsol Kim,
  • Helen Fitzmaurice,
  • Catherine Newman,
  • Kevin Worthington,
  • Katherine Chan,
  • Paul Wooldridge,
  • Philipp Köhler,
  • Christian Frankenberg,
  • Ronald C Cohen
Alexander Turner
University of Washington

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Jinsol Kim
University of California
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Helen Fitzmaurice
University of California
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Catherine Newman
University of California
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Kevin Worthington
University of California
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Katherine Chan
University of California
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Paul Wooldridge
University of California
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Philipp Köhler
California Institute of Technology
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Christian Frankenberg
California Institute of Technology
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Ronald C Cohen
University of California
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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)