Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

Yes you will get events outside the norm, it is not the single events but the whole period average you need to look at, like looking at a single day or week of weather note and remembering the whole period around that single event. Yet the whole winter period would be warmer. Then you can have one part of a large country have it colder than normal and yet the other parts has it warmer and the average for that whole country being warmer, yet for those in the colder part they will disagree.

Yes you will get events outside the norm, it is not the single events but the whole period average you need to look at, like looking at a single day or week of weather note and remembering the whole period around that single event. Yet the whole winter period would be warmer. Then you can have one part of a large country have it colder than normal and yet the other parts has it warmer and the average for that whole country being warmer, yet for those in the colder part they will disagree.

EDIT ADD: >I have absolutely no idea but Is it possible to have a short term decrease in emissions change the weather like this ?

I don't think this is going be as short term and will certainly playout throughout the year at least. LongTerm: The World will be a different place a year from now, hard to speculate, but this is WW3 The World vs a Virus

what you're seeing is weather. what's important is climate. you'll see more strange weather as a consequence of the changing climate.

> I have absolutely no idea but Is it possible to have a short term decrease in emissions change the weather like this ?

no

depends, some reflect, some don't, but all done high up and the layers above them warms, having a detrimental effect overall. So a mixed bag, certainly not a solution.

I hope you understand that your declaration sounds bonkers to any rational person? I understand of course that there is a possibility as the system is chaotic. But narrative wise this creates an impossible situation, where everything, even the movement in the supposedly right direction is bad? I would consider "What else do you want from me? ---- off" a normal and valid reaction to this.

On the one hand it's just a drop in the bucket; on the other hand, emissions have been growing exponentially, so it's quite a big drop.

Once the dust settles, the data and more so, political and populus consensus will be more pro good air quality than currently and the momentum will see much change. That's my prediction of how this will traction over the years ahead.

Certainly see airplane tickets become more expensive as the days of cheap subsidized (low fuel tax's/duty) flights are in the end of days. Airlines running on razor thin margins will not survive this and personally, that's a good thing given the that IMHO the overall impact is a false-economy upon the environment.

Though that will only see more investment into electric planes, which will have a fair chance with a fair market for such competition.

Interesting times ahead, kinda focusing on the positives over the loss of life that will drive such change.

Could you back this up with statistics?

stratospheric water vapor, on the other hand...

CO2 isn't everything, what about disrupted air streams or high altitude pollution (NO2, NOx, PM2.5, &c.) ? Surely burning 1L of jet fuel at sea level is not the same as at 15k feet (ozone layer ?)

It's very easy to focus on CO2, it's probably the least harmful thing a jet engine will exhaust.

Yes, although it’s worth saying that at least in Britain business trips are a strong minority of flights. With Heathrow expansion the case was made that it was vital because capacity was stretched, and businesses in general needed the extra flights, but in fact most flights are tourism. And even within that category there’s a lot of frivolous travel, people flying for a night or two, or even commuting by plane.

With respect, travelling to relocate for work or to visit family seem like they fall into the category of necessary flights - I mean, if you said to everyone "you can only take 10 return flights in your life from now on", people would spend them on relocating and family visits with considerable ease. They would think twice about that ski trip though.

As you say, the average business trip is more about status and could easily be dropped. But it's not fair to put relocation for work into that category.

Was surprised to hear it was China that was offering help to the EU first, yet none of the other countries seemed to care for Italy. So much for the United States of Europe ever forming.

Its also surprising so many people thought globalism would be with no significant downsides whatsoever. A virus wreaking havoc was waiting to happen, and we never thought about creating a plan. You'd figure these are the times you'd call people to duty; not to go to war, but to do the small things (medical, transportation or other essential stuff) that others can't do or to help handle to load. In case of emergency, I'm sure I'd prove a lot more useful transporting hospital beds than fixing JIRA tickets for a SaaS company in finance. But maybe that's just me.

Give it a couple of weeks.

I'm not sure I follow? My claim is in the places finding they have covid now, for the most part it has already reached saturation levels. Not that it doesn't grow exponentially, per se. Just in many places that growth happened well before testing.

While true, I bet you could also correlate lung damage to population density. Thing is, we know there are causal attributes to some of these places to poor lung health.

Smoking is also more common (to my knowledge) in Italy. That could have something to do with it.

I didn't limit the virus to being sensitive to environmental lung damage. I'm saying existing lung damage makes people more prone to the serious cases.

Would be why you haven't heard of many (any?) children getting this. You know they are getting it.

So, I'm not clear on your criticism. The air quality in China is worse, but from what we've heard, their fatalities have been worse. They took ridiculously extreme measures and had a lot of deaths.

My perspective is I had the worst asthma attack of my adult life a month ago. Closest to this I have had was when I had walking pneumonia about a decade ago. I literally could not breath well enough to say three words at a time. I was not tested for covid, because I did not knowingly have contact with someone that did. Looking back, hard for me to think I had something else. I look at the rest of my family, who have all had fevers and coughs, and I ask why don't they also have difficulty breathing? Best answer I have is lung health.

Well, in the affected parts of China enforced isolation is in effect, and satellite imagery has shown that the air in these areas is dramatically less polluted now, so the effects are mitigated for now. Also, they're only testing in affected cities, not in rural areas, where the virus could be much more prevalent for all we know.

Their reporting of test results is unreliable anyway as they could be distorting numbers to make it seem like they have less of a problem than they do or to make it seem like their containment measures are working, and the tight control over the media and their totalitarian society makes it very difficult to independently confirm their numbers.

So I would take any reports coming out of China with several large heaps of salt.

In many places, the tests run are well behind people already recovering from the mild cases. Would they show as negative or positive? (Genuinely asking.)

Mostly due to age skew.

Actually, fatality is most likely not as high as it appears from (confirmed) cases compared to deaths.

A large fraction of cases may go unrecorded because people only have minor symptoms and don't get hospitalized. In places with more extensive testing, like South Korea, deaths make up < 1% of confirmed cases. And even there, it's assumed that not all of them have been recorded.