Visualizing the Impact of COVID-19 Through the Lens of NASA Science

In a normal year we’d be together in person , but it is anything but a normal year. Instead of hurriedly navigating to make our next talks, each session is only a click away; and instead of engaging face-to-face with our colleagues and heading to the exhibit hall for a beer, we’re sitting at home in front of our computers. Yup, this year is far from from normal – for us, and for the planet. This year, the spread of the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes COVID-19, has changed not only our conference travel schedules, but also much of our daily lives. and the lives of all of our friends and families worldwide.

In normal years, NASA’s Earth Science 00:43 - Division and our partners work together to study the farthest reaches of our planet Combined, our unique observing capabilities in space, in the air, on the ground, and at sea have helped to observe the outermost edges of our atmosphere all the way to the deepest recesses of the Earth. These partnerships, built over many years, have helped us to quickly respond to and capture the changes rapidly happening around us. Our planet is an interconnected system of systems with everything intermingling and affecting each other. So what happens to this system of systems when populations worldwide come to a near tumultuous halt during a pandemic? Together our colleagues in Europe, Japan, and throughout the United States are working to examine Earth systems through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic through the lens of Earth Systems. When governments began implementing shutdowns at the start of the pandemic, scientists wondered how the Earth would respond to such a change in human behavior.

With people largely 01:50 - confined to their homes, there were likely to be fewer cars, planes, and ships burning and emitting fossil fuels. As the pandemic has progressed, these scenarios have largely played out: For example, the image here provides a stark picture of empty parking lots near deserted commercial districts and around Los Angeles. Blue areas represent places where slowdowns were the most severe. Scientists obtained these data by combining remote sensing technology known as synthetic aperture radar or SAR, measurements by JAXA and ESA with high resolution imagery from our commercial partner Planet Labs. By comparing SAR images of the same areas before and after pandemic- related shutdowns, decreases in car activities near LA’s airports, sports stadiums, and shopping malls were visible from space.

02:42 - These sudden global shifts in our behavior have provided scientists with a unique opportunity to conduct a natural experiment: one that helps us all better understand society’s role in influencing the Earth’s systems. Most notably, changes in air quality have been some of the most obvious impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic. But, as we’ll soon see, the effect on specific air pollutants has varied and dependent on their lifespans in the atmosphere. Air pollutants with the relatively short lifespans of several hours such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), seen here, decreased rapidly and dramatically as restrictions were put into place. Nitrogen dioxide is a key ingredient in smog – shown here over LA.

Thick smog is harmful to breathe and can significantly reduce visibility. Both NASA and our global partners are able to see stark changes in nitrogen dioxide during the pandemic thanks to two different instruments; The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA’s Aura satellite, and the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard the European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. While OMI has a longer data record, TROPOMI provides higher resolution observations. Over the past several years OMI data have shown an overall reduction in nitrogen dioxide in the U.S. because changes of environmental policies and technological advances.

So when cities shut 04:16 - down during the initial onset of the pandemic, the effect on local nitrogen dioxide levels was like flipping a switch. In the northeast United States – home to a string of cities from Washington D.C. to Boston and the busy Interstate-95 highway. Nitrogen dioxide levels fell by more than 30% in March compared to the previous 5-year average. Similarly, after North Carolina issued a statewide shelter-in- place order on March 27th, nitrogen dioxide levels there and in the surrounding areas plummeted more than 40% compared to the previous 5-year average.

04:53 - The same pattern played out again and again across the United States and the world as shut downs were enacted. While we were able to immediately observe changes in nitrogen dioxide changes in other fuel-related air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), have been much more difficult to discern. While nitrogen dioxide only lasts a few hours in the air, carbon dioxide can last for centuries. Because of this, it has an incredibly uniform global distribution pattern. Two Earth observing satellites have tracked changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

OCO-2 collects measurements at relatively high spatial resolution 05:38 - and monitors regional scale changes in carbon dioxide, while GOSAT has a longer data record and can be targeted to collect measurements over large urban areas. Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas that greatly affects the Earth’s climate, as we know. Across the entire world, background concentrations of carbon dioxide vary by only a few percent and large natural swings and carbon dioxide are largely associated with the biosphere. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to differentiate between the small temporary changes associated with the pandemic that scientists expect to see. To do this, NASA scientists developed a new method to distinguish between changes in carbon dioxide from emissions and those associated with natural variation.

By combining advanced computer modeling 06:30 - with OCO-2 measurements, they determined that a 0.5 parts per million reduction (about 0.125% decrease) in carbon dioxide concentrations over China, Europe, and the United States during the pandemic. This is a change that’s nearly 1,000 times smaller than the global concentration in the atmosphere making it a significant observational achievement for our satellite sensors and modeling systems. The ability to spot these relatively small changes in carbon dioxide emissions from space is truly groundbreaking. Not only will it help us better understand the difference between human activity and natural variations in this important earth system, but it has also taught us more about how changes in economic activity can act as a forcing mechanism on our planet.

07:20 - At NASA, were also playing a part in examining COVID-19 through the lens of our planet. Previous research has shown that some respiratory viruses have seasonal rhythms for example cases of influenza and several types of other coronaviruses are known to surge in the winter. NASA joins other U.S. and international agencies and hunting for answers in whether the novel coronavirus has a seasonal rhythm. Scientists are investigating potential relationships between the spread of the novel coronavirus and seasonal shifts in humidity temperature rainfall and other environmental variables. Together with clinical data, we hope our work will help clarify the role that weather and climate might play in influencing the spread of this virus.

We’ll continue to work with our many 08:12 - partners and leverage the valuable commercial and government data sources available to us as we all work to observe and understand the changes occurring on earth during this extraordinary time and also thereafter. In the words of my late friend and colleague Dr Michael Freilich “Earth system science is bigger than any particular agency. It’s bigger than any single nation. It’s bigger than any single continent. And I surely hope, because humanity requires, it that we make some significant progress in understanding it.” I agree Mike. Thank you .