Current and future global climate impacts resulting from COVID-19

During the lockdown in 2020, I co-authored a paper with my father, published in the journal Nature Climate Change. We evaluated the impact the pandemic had on the atmosphere in order to discover if there was any effect on the Earth's global temperature. We found that the result was negligible, with a temperature change reduction of less than 0.2%. However, we did see large changes in emissions, and predicted that if the lockdown conditions were maintained, we would see much larger effects on the environment.

I discussed this work in an interview for the BBC World Service.

I am continually interested in the future pathways generated by climate research. The data we gather creates predictions for the future, and the data shows it is up to us which path to take. Can it really be that simple? Climate models generate possible pathways. I am interested in probing what this looks like in lived experience: how can we make projection data accessible to those beyond the scientific community?

I presented these questions at the Democratising Climate Science Pavilion at COP26 in Glasgow.