Reductions in California's Urban Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions associated with fossil fuel consumption (ffCO 2 ) are the dominant cause of climate change (IPCC, 2022). Hence, there is an urgent need to quantify ffCO 2 emissions to support the success of climate change mitigation efforts. Urban areas account for 30%-84% of global ffCO 2 emissions (Seto et al., 2014), despite encompassing less than 1% of the Earth's land area (Zhou et al., 2015). While being disproportional contributors to climate change, cities are also at the forefront of climate change mitigation actions (Rosenzweig et al., 2010), making them a top priority for quantifying and monitoring ffCO 2 emission reduction efforts.Satellite-borne instruments can detect CO 2 enhancements (i.e., 6 ppm above background) over large cities (Kiel et al., 2021;Schwandner et al., 2017), and urban tower networks continuously measure CO 2 levels in a small selection of cities in more economically developed countries. However, these atmospheric observation systems

Comparison of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Based on GOSAT, OCO-2 Observations and Ground-Based TCCON Data

“…However, a remarkable turning point occurred in 2020 with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis led to an unprecedented 7% reduction in global ffCO 2 , with the total amount dropping to approximately 34 gigatons of CO 2 (GtCO 2 ) [14,15]. This marked the largest annual reduction in history and underscores the pivotal role of policy implementation in curbing fossil fuel use and CO 2 emissions.…”