Scripps Oceanography climate scientists ponder what episode tells us about global warming.
The coronavirus pandemic has produced startling images, not just of besieged emergency rooms, but of deserted highways, beaches, and other public places—of life interrupted everywhere.
The economic effect produced other surreal images in the run up to Earth Day that hint at what could either be a new normal or mere apparition: jellies swimming through Venice canals, blue skies over urban skylines normally tinted brown year-round. In India, people living at the feet of the Himalayas have been able to see the mountains for the first time in years, as if in a dream.”
These will be among the immediate effects of coronavirus, say scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who have been monitoring pollution, tracking the chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and documenting ecosystem responses. While lamenting the terrible circumstances that have led to various changes in nature, they predict CO2 levels will show a slight drop if economic activity is slowed for a full year, air pollution will be expected to kill fewer people, and fishes that would have been caught as seafood will instead live another season to reproduce. That will improve fish stocks and the overall health of the oceans now that fishing vessels are, by and large, docked.
Continue reading at University of California San Diego
Image via University of California San Diego
