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Measuring Economic Recovery in Post Covid China by Monitoring Air Pollutants (NO2)
The disturbing paper to which I'll refer, with little comment beyond excerpting it is this one:
TROPOMI NO2 Shows a Fast Recovery of China’s Economy in the First Quarter of 2023 Hui Li and Bo Zheng Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2023 10 (8), 635-641.
The excerpt:
The World Health Organization announced on May 5, 2023, that Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern, which ended the three-year pandemic (https://www.who.int/). Before this, due to the milder symptoms of the virus (1) and the increasing vaccination rates (https://covid19.who.int/), many countries have already downgraded their COVID-19 prevention and control measures. For example, the US President signed into law to terminate the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic on April 10, 2023 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/). The UK suspended its COVID-19 alert level system and transitioned to living with COVID-19 on March 29, 2023 (https://www.gov.uk/). China issued a Notice on Further Optimizing the Implementation of COVID-19 Prevention and Control Measures to optimize the COVID-19 response with ten measures on December 7, 2022, and further renamed the coronavirus pneumonia to novel coronavirus infection on December 26, 2022 (http://www.gov.cn/). The quarantine requirements that curbed people’s travel were lifted for the first time during the past three years. (2,3) The year 2023 marked a new phase around the world and opened a window to investigate how soon each country can recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. (4,5) As a major global trading nation (6) and the world’s factory, China’s economic recovery has attracted global attention in the postpandemic era.
However, the lack of real-time economic statistics makes it challenging to timely monitor the economic recovery. (7) Previous studies have disclosed that ambient nitrogen dioxides (NO2), a reactive and short-lived gas (8) mainly released from fuel combustion, (9,10) respond to emergency actions swiftly and fluctuate dynamically with the changes in anthropogenic activities and emissions, particularly during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns. (11−14) The sensitivity of NO2 concentrations to socioeconomic changes has been witnessed on a global scale. (15,16) NO2 tropospheric vertical column densities (TVCDs) retrieved from satellite observations have played an important role in monitoring ambient NO2 concentrations, economic activities, and anthropogenic emission variations. (17−19) Here we investigate the daily dynamics of satellite-observed NO2 around the Chinese New Year (CNY) in China since 2005. Chemical transport models, high-resolution emission inventories, and population density distribution maps are utilized to attribute the NO2 changes to emission sectors and regions, which helps us to understand the drivers of satellite-observed NO2 changes...
However, the lack of real-time economic statistics makes it challenging to timely monitor the economic recovery. (7) Previous studies have disclosed that ambient nitrogen dioxides (NO2), a reactive and short-lived gas (8) mainly released from fuel combustion, (9,10) respond to emergency actions swiftly and fluctuate dynamically with the changes in anthropogenic activities and emissions, particularly during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns. (11−14) The sensitivity of NO2 concentrations to socioeconomic changes has been witnessed on a global scale. (15,16) NO2 tropospheric vertical column densities (TVCDs) retrieved from satellite observations have played an important role in monitoring ambient NO2 concentrations, economic activities, and anthropogenic emission variations. (17−19) Here we investigate the daily dynamics of satellite-observed NO2 around the Chinese New Year (CNY) in China since 2005. Chemical transport models, high-resolution emission inventories, and population density distribution maps are utilized to attribute the NO2 changes to emission sectors and regions, which helps us to understand the drivers of satellite-observed NO2 changes...
The takeaway is that when one offshores manufacturing, one offshores pollution.
I personally believe it doesn't have to be this way, but the reality is that it is this way.