Global Tropospheric Ozone Response to Worldwide COVID-19 Lockdowns

  • Released Wednesday, June 9, 2021
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Free tropospheric ozone anomaly at 500 hPa

During 2020, global COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in a decrease in global NOx emissions. Because the amount of free tropospheric ozone is closely tied to NOx photochemistry, this reduction also produced a reduction of tropospheric ozone. This visualization presents the results of a study done by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to quantify this decrease. The scientists modeled the atmosphere from February to June 2020, and compared it to the “business as usual” case that would be expected in the absence of the lockdown. The result was an overall decrease of free tropospheric ozone of up to 5 ppb globally.

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NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 12:17 AM EST.

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