The corona crisis causes a temporary dip in CO emissions. But as the CO2 level in the atmosphere continues to rise, we are not dealing with further cooling, but with further warming. In fact, 2020 is fast becoming the hottest year ever recorded, according to an analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The American equivalent of the KNMI has a network of climate satellites and therefore has a global coverage series.
It shows that it was already so hot in the first four months of this year worldwide that 2020 will be high in the list of hottest years anyway. According to the NOAA, the chance is already 75 percent that 2020 will be the hottest year ever recorded.
The global average temperature has been leapfrog in recent years. The five hottest years have been measured since 2015. 2016 is at the top and last year is second warmest years ever measured.
This illustrates that much is needed to stop global warming and that the impact of a temporary reduction in CO2 emissions as a result of the corona crisis is relatively small.
Corona crisis has more effect on CO2 emissions than credit crisis
The most recent estimate comes from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Published in the previous week Global Energy Review 2020 the IEA estimates that global CO2 emissions will be about 8 percent lower this year. In recent decades, however, emissions have not increased in 2009, during the recession as a result of the credit crisis.
The drop in emissions from the corona crisis is expected to be eight times greater than that during the 2009 recession. Nevertheless, this is not enough to effectively curb global warming.
This is because the CO2 level in the atmosphere is largely cumulative. As long as we continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels – and thus convert carbon from deep strata into CO2 – there is no closed cycle. Then the concentration higher and with it the temperature.
A ten times larger reduction is needed to stop global warming
In which case does the warming stop? Only when we no longer emit a gram of CO2? Fortunately a little earlier. Because the oceans are also extracting some of our emissions from the atmosphere, the temperature should stabilize (within a few decades) if the emissions from the burning of oil, coal and gas worldwide decrease by about 80 percent.
That is still ten times as much as the emission dip caused by the corona crisis. In addition, it is believed that it is not a structural, but temporary decrease.
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