Intressant artikel från Wired.
Den är bakom en betalvägg. Men har du inga kakor från dem så får man läsa xx antal artiklar innan de låser sidan.
During the coronavirus lockdowns, emissions of the potent greenhouse gas somehow soared. The culprit wasn't humans—but the Earth itself.
www.wired.com
"As the pandemic locked the world down in 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 17 percent. But the global emission of methane, which is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas yet disappears from the atmosphere much quicker, went up, even though industrial processes, like oil and gas extraction, slowed. "
"When we burn fossil fuels, they produce CO2, but also nitrogen oxide, or NOx. As NOx enters the atmosphere, it produces a molecule known as the hydroxyl radical (OH), which breaks down methane. All told, OH removes about 85 percent of annual methane emissions. “During the lockdown, the emission of NOx was decreasing,” says Peng. “So the OH of the atmospher the methane sink could be slowed down.”
That is, as we polluted less heavy industry spun down, flights got canceled, people stopped commuting we also produced less of the pollutant that normally breaks down methane. It’s a second unfortunate and surprising consequence of cutting pollution: Burning fossil fuels also produces aerosols that bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space, somewhat cooling the climate. While it’s imperative that we decarbonize as quickly as possible, cutting out the beneficial effects of NOx and aerosols has some unintended and twisted side effects.
“Burning less fossil fuels will cause there to be less OH radicals in the atmosphere, which will cause methane concentrations to go up,”"
