COVID-19: Rapid detection of the impact of COVID-19 on UK greenhouse gas emissions

Lead Research Organisation: University of Bristol
Department Name: Chemistry

Abstract

The nationwide restrictions on social interaction brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak have the potential to dramatically change the UK's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, given the lack of precedent, it is difficult to predict the sign, magnitude, or spatial and temporal change that may occur. Atmospheric GHG observations are sensitive to emissions changes over very short timescales (hours to days), and therefore "top-down" (atmospheric data-based) inference of GHG emissions has the potential to provide rapid updates to climate researchers, the public and stakeholders (e.g. BEIS and the UK's GHG inventory compilers). There have already been reports of reductions in atmospheric concentrations of GHGs and air pollutants in the media from across the world. However, these reports have sometimes lacked scientific rigour, ignoring the critical influence of meteorology and seasonality. Here, we aim to use data from the UK's unique GHG measurement network (the UK DECC network) and adapt our atmospheric modelling and statistical inference frameworks to provide robust information on any rapid changes in UK GHG emissions that occur during the period of COVID-19-related restrictions. Conversely, the change in anthropogenic activity provides an unprecedented opportunity to test top-down (atmospheric data-based) emissions inference frameworks, such as those used to report UK GHG emissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
 
Description We found that the UK's methane emissions were not impacted by Covid-19 related lockdowns (Lunt et al., 2021). Emissions for 2020 were found to be broadly in line with the generally declining trend in methane emissions from the UK over the last decade. Therefore, it appears that methane emissions are not sensitive to a major slowdown in economic activity. This finding is important in planning our path to net-zero.
Exploitation Route The outcomes of this project have important outcomes for those examining GHG emissions reductions in the UK in the future.
Sectors Environment

 
Description The advances in this grant contributed to the presentation of a live data dashboard during COP26 in Glasgow. The dashboard showed how GHG measurements could be used to evaluate emissions at urban and national scales https://openghg.github.io/dashboard/. This activity was accompanied by an article in The Conversation outlining the need for these methods: https://theconversation.com/countries-may-be-under-reporting-their-greenhouse-gas-emissions-thats-why-accurate-monitoring-is-crucial-171645
First Year Of Impact 2021
Sector Environment
Impact Types Policy & public services

 
Description Met Office 
Organisation Meteorological Office UK
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Expertise in inverse methods
Collaborator Contribution Exertise in atmospheric modelling
Impact Publications.
Start Year 2012
 
Title ACRG-Bristol/acrg: ACRG v0.2.0 
Description ACRG standardisation and inversion code v0.2.0 Added Ability to convert calibration scale in get_obs New "defaults" file that specifies inlets and instruments to use for particular time periods An obs.db SQLite database that specifies the location of all obs files and basic details about their contents (species, inlet, time range, etc.) notebooks directory for Jupyter notebooks notebooks/tutorials directory for notebook based tutorials a tmp directory to store random job script output files added a dev environment that includes spyder and a lighter environment that does not Changed get_single_site now returns a list of xarray datasets, one for each combination of inlet and site. If defaults are specified, the list will contain the default instruments and inlets for each period get_obs now returns a dictionary containing lists of datasets calibration scale and inlet are now attributes to obs datasets (e.g. ds.attrs["scale"]) fp_data_merge now works with new get_obs object The flux function will now look for species-total.nc named files first and then look for species.nc files. This will not be able to read both files. This can still accept an more explicit source such as co2-ff_*.nc as an alternative to this. arviz package version pinned to prevent conflict with pymc3 version 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact This software is used to evaluate emissions of greenhouse gases for the UK and other countries. 
URL https://zenodo.org/record/6834888
 
Title OpenGHG 
Description A toolkit for greenhouse gas data analysis 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact Software is being used to evaluate the UK's greenhouse gas emissions