Introducing View2020
It is no secret that humans have been overloading the planetary resources on which we depend. Economic activity and population growth have now pushed through Earth’s ecological ceiling, with dramatic effects on climate, ocean, soil, biodiversity, freshwater, and the ozone layer. But, what happens when we take the foot of the economic pedal, even for a few months?
Over the last few weeks, the Planet OS team has developed View2020, a dashboard that tracks environmental conditions both historically and throughout 2020. View2020 is built on the Planet OS Datahub, a powerful data catalogue that collates disparate environmental data into a single source. Our goal with View2020 is to give both casual observers and professionals alike an easy-to-consume view into the data in order to better understand our changing environment. In exposing environmental data, we hope to spur innovation and draw attention to our environment’s condition, especially as efforts are made to improve it.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an unprecedented opportunity to measure changes in our environment that are occuring as economic activity slows down. With View2020, we hope to derive a baseline that captures the environmental conditions that are possible when the world reduces pollution for a period of months. Using environmental sensor data curated through the Planet OS Datahub, View2020 will visualize environmental signals to document deviations from this baseline, gathering important insights from the data over time. We will track public data from authoritative sources on various measurements including pollutants, ocean temperature, bioacoustics, and ecology. View2020 is a work in progress and a community tool — we invite you to share your data and views with us.
Initial Analysis
Since the beginning of 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a dramatic global decrease in many air pollutants, animals are reclaiming lands which were once the domain of humans, and even carbon dioxide levels are decreasing. An initial analysis of the data shows that globally, levels of carbon monoxide, particulate matter 2.5, particulate matter 10 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have all decreased compared to the same month in 2019. Particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) demonstrates the steepest global decline, with a 57% drop comparing April 2019 to April 2020. PM 2.5 derives from both natural and human sources, consisting of solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in the air with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller. Declining levels of particulate matter in the air have led to some dramatic results. For example, residents of Northern India have reported that the Himalaya Mountain Range has become visible for the first time in a generation.
On a country-level, there are wide divergences in the degree of pollution change. Using the maps on View2020, users can view changes in air pollutants over time. This information raises many questions that we invite you to ponder. For example, the highest increase in NO2, a pollutant that is primarily caused by burning fuel but also derives from natural sources, was a 560% increase in Papua New Guinea, comparing March 2019 to March 2020. Is this because of active volcanic activity or because of Papua New Guinea’s proximity to highly polluting nations such as Indonesia? Interestingly however, Antarctica showed a dramatic spike of 57% in NO2 levels in April. All of this information raises a number of questions which we hope to investigate — with your input — over the coming months.
What’s Next?
There are many questions at the intersection of the environmental crisis and the ongoing global health crisis. If this is what it takes to bring pollution levels down, are we willing to continue along this trajectory until our environment returns to health? Will we go back to our old polluting ways after the lockdowns end? Can we use the momentum gathered in public engagement to shift for good?
In a recent editorial, Inger Anderson, head of the UN Environment Program, noted: “…COVID-19 is by no means a “silver lining” for the environment. Visible, positive impacts — whether through improved air quality or reduced greenhouse gas emissions — are but temporary, because they come on the back of tragic economic slowdown and human distress.” Real and sustained environmental improvement will require us to break from our pre-COVID19 model of growth and to reimagine new ways of working and living.
While we do not have a crystal ball to peer into the future, we can use data to help explain the current situation. In order for leaders to make informed decisions about how to restart our economies, we need a better view into how ecological and climate systems are developing, for better or worse. Data is the medium through which environmental change becomes actionable. Therefore, making data accessible and understandable is crucial. That is our mission at Planet OS.
The Planet OS Datahub provides free access to high-quality earth science data, and is routinely updated with new datasets. If you’d like to be notified when new data becomes available, follow Planet OS on Medium or subscribe to our email newsletter to receive future updates in your inbox.
