Study Shows CO2 Emissions Rise After Pandemic Dip

The dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions from the pandemic lockdown has pretty much disappeared in a puff of coal-fired smoke, much of it from China, a new scientific study has found.

A group of scientists who track heat-trapping gases that cause climate change says the first nine months of 2021 put emissions a tad under 2019 levels.

They estimate that in 2021, the world will have spewed 36.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, compared to 36.7 billion metric tons in 2019.

At the height of the pandemic last year, emissions were down to 34.8 billion metric tons, so this year's jump from 2020 is 4.9%, according to updated calculations by the Global Carbon Project.

While most countries went back to pre-pandemic trends, China's pollution increase was mostly responsible for worldwide figures bouncing back to 2019 levels rather than dropping significantly below them, according to study co-author Corinne Le Quéré.

Emissions in China were 7% higher in 2021 when compared to 2019, the study said.

By comparison, India's emissions were only 3% higher, while the United States, the European Union and the rest of the world polluted less this year than in 2019.

Le Quéré believes China's jump was mostly from burning coal and natural gas and was part of a massive economic stimulus to recover from the lockdown.

China's lockdown ended far earlier than the rest of the world, so the country had longer to recover economically and pump more carbon into the air.

With 2020's dramatically clean air in cities from India to Italy, some people may have hoped the world was on the right track in reducing carbon pollution.

Le Quéré, who presented the study at the Glasgow climate talks, expresses hope that the data will serve as a "reality check", forcing countries to come up with a "firm detailed proposal" on what they are going to do next to tackle climate change.

If the world is going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, it has only 11 years left at current emissions level before it is just too late, the study says.

The world has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.