How much has the pandemic reduced global carbon emissions?

Back in the spring when lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic were at their peak, countries the world over noticed an unintended benefit: a significant decrease in air pollutants. Now that the year is drawing to a close and the data is in, we know what that drop meant for global carbon emissions.

According to the Global Carbon Project, in 2020 the world saw a seven percent decrease in fossil carbon emissions (the stuff that causes global warming and climate change) over 2019 levels. Rob Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project and an earth scientist at Stanford University, estimates that is the equivalent of taking 500 million cars off the roads around the world for a whole year (which, in a way, is kind of what happened).

Unfortunately, the overall carbon in the atmosphere still increased despite the drop in emissions. The group estimates that the atmosphere’s carbon concentration increased by about 2.5 parts per million (ppm), putting the total average of carbon in the atmosphere at about 412 ppm. So we still have a lot of work to do in order to bring that number down, but now we know that reducing transportation emissions is a good place to start.