Climate change: Lockdown has 'negligible' effect on temperatures
The dramatic drop in greenhouse gases and air pollutants seen during the global lockdown will have little impact on our warming planet say scientists.
Their new analysis suggests that by 2030, global temperatures will only be 0.01C lower than expected.
But the authors stress that the nature of the recovery could significantly alter the longer term outlook.
A strong green stimulus could keep the world from exceeding 1.5C of warming by the middle of this century.
Previous studies have already established that there were significant changes to greenhouse gas emissions as transport systems shut down around the world in response to the pandemic.
Global daily emissions of CO2 fell by 17% at the peak of the crisis.
The new study builds on these findings by using global mobility data from Google and Apple.
Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, who led the study, worked with his daughter Harriet on the research, when her A-Level exams were cancelled.
With other researchers, they calculated how 10 different greenhouse gases and air pollutants changed between February and June 2020 in 123 countries.
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