As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner

As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily.

Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most pollutedcities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible indecades.

   

Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United Statesis down 30 per cent. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April weredown 49 per cent from a year ago. Stars seems more visible at night.

People are also noticing animals in places and at times theydon’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenueand near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets ofSantiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daringwildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and openingrefrigerators to look for food.

When people stay home, Earth becomes cleaner and wilder.

“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into justhow much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” saysconservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us anopportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”

Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute forthe Environment, assembled scientists to assess the ecological changeshappening with so much of humanity housebound.

Scientists, stuck at home like the rest of us, say they areeager to explore unexpected changes in weeds, insects, weather patterns, noiseand light pollution. Italy’s government is working on an ocean expedition toexplore sea changes from the lack of people.

“In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with asledgehammer and now we see what Earth’s response is,” Field says.

Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional airpollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. These types ofpollution kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, according to HealthEffects Institute president Dan Greenbaum.

The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since aNASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide, in 2005, says NASAatmospheric scientist Barry Lefer. Largely caused by burning of fossil fuels,this pollution is short-lived, so the air gets cleaner quickly.

Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution isdown 46 per cent in Paris, 35 per cent in Bengaluru, India, 38 per cent inSydney, 29 per cent in Los Angeles, 26 per cent in Rio de Janeiro and 9 percent in Durban, South Africa, NASA measurements show.

“We’re getting a glimpse of what might happen if we startswitching to non-polluting cars,” Lefer says.

Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. OnApril 3, residents of Jalandhar, a city in north India’s Punjab, woke up to aview not seen for decades: snow-capped Himalayan peaks more than 100 milesaway.

Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especiallychildren, says Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health researchat the Stanford University School of Medicine. And she notes early studies alsolink coronavirus severity to people with bad lungs and those in more pollutedareas, though it’s too early to tell which factor is stronger.

The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate changestay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown isunlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climatescientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not asfast as last year. Aerosol pollution, which doesn’t stay airborne long, is alsodropping. But aerosols cool the planet so NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt isinvestigating whether their falling levels may be warming local temperaturesfor now.

Stanford’s Field says he’s most intrigued by increased urbansightings of coyotes, pumas and other wildlife that are becoming video socialmedia staples. Boar-like javelinas congregated outside of a Arizona shoppingcenter. Even New York City birds seem hungrier and bolder.

In Adelaide, Australia, police shared a video of a kangaroohoping around a mostly empty downtown, and a pack of jackals occupied an urbanpark in Tel Aviv, Israel.

We’re not being invaded. The wildlife has always been there,but many animals are shy, Duke’s Pimm says. They come out when humans stayhome.

For sea turtles across the globe, humans have made itdifficult to nest on sandy beaches. The turtles need to be undisturbed andemerging hatchlings get confused by beachfront lights, says David Godfrey,executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

But with lights and people away, this year’s sea turtlenesting so far seems much better from India to Costa Rica to Florida, Godfreysays.”There’s some silver lining for wildlife in whatotherwise is a fairly catastrophic time for humans,” he says.

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