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Policies requiring people to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in dramatic reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions At their lowest point, CO2 emissions dropped by 17% in early April, as China was ramping its economy back up and the US and other countries slowed theirs Researchers expect that these extreme decreases won’t last the entire year and estimate that daily CO2 emissions will be down by at least 4% overall for 2020 (Nat Clim Change 2020, DOI: 10 1038/s41558-020-0797-x) The 17% decline is the biggest change in CO2 emissions since World War II, and may turn out to be the most precipitous drop ever observed, says Robert Jackson, an earth system scientist at Stanford University To estimate changes in CO2 emissions, Jackson and a team of researchers led by University of East Anglia climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré used data on traffic, flights, steel production, electricity usage, and[truncated]
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