The coronavirus pandemic has certainly led to a decrease in industrial activity and resulting greenhouse gas emissions during its reign over the planet in 2020.
Climate Beyond Covid: Can We Keep It Up? M. Stiles, Meriden, CT
The coronavirus pandemic has certainly led to a decrease in industrial activity and resulting greenhouse gas emissions during its reign over the planet in 2020. A recent study by German researchers calculated that global carbon dioxide emissions fell by about eight percent over the past year. While this is no doubt a good result from an otherwise bad situation, the researchers warn it represents nothing but a small drop in the bucket compared to what we still need to accomplish even bigger annual emissions drops every year for decades to come to avert cataclysmic climate change.
Climate-related disasters cost world over $145B in 2020 inquirer.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from inquirer.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Wild weather, warming planet 2020 Replay
Published December 23, 2020
It’s been a year of extremes. Wildfires consumed vast areas of Australia, Siberia and the U.S. West. Flooding in Africa and southeast Asia pushed millions from their homes, while extreme heat and drought hit countries in South America. Cyclone Harold tore through the Pacific, and this year saw an exceptionally intense hurricane season in the Atlantic, including unprecedented back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes that devastated Central American countries in November. And in the Arctic, sea ice shrank back to its second-lowest extent ever recorded.
For years, scientists have warned that climate change will cause increasingly chaotic and extreme weather, and studies are bearing that out. Advances in a field known as “event attribution science” mean researchers are able to assess whether climate change played a role in causing, or worsening, a specific weather event.