Covid Shutdowns Actually Heated Up the Planet – a Bit

During the Covid shutdowns, fewer people were driving cars and that meant that fewer particles made their way into our air. Clearly less pollution in our air is a good thing. But something that might not be obvious is this. Particles in the air act like tiny umbrellas. They block out the sunlight. So when there are fewer of them, more sunlight makes it to the ground – which heats things up, at least a bit. Here are all the details in an article released in Geophysical Research Letters.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2020GL091805