Today, with many economies locked down to slow the spread of coronavirus, people from Beijing to Los Angeles have noticed bluer skies and less smog. Satellites show cleaner air extending across Asia, Europe, and North America. These images reflect how the air is changing as the world confronts COVID-19. People are staying home, driving less, and taking fewer flights and cruises. This crisis provides a unique experiment to see how the atmosphere responds as nations cut their emissions. The air is getting cleaner, although these blue skies may be temporary. Most of those maps are plotted from satellite observations of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, a gas that triggers respiratory illnesses such as asthma. It also reacts in the air to form other types of pollution, such as smog, haze, and acid rain. Nitrogen dioxide can be observed from space because it absorbs unique slivers of sunlight’s rainbow of colors. Those observations tell us a lot about what’s happe...
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