significant decreases in harmful emissions.

“Carbon dioxide is tied to industrial activity, electricity production and transportation, so anything that affects those sectors will impact greenhouse gases, as well,” Jones said.

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The new coronavirus first emerged in late December in Wuhan. As it rapidly spilled into neighboring regions, the Chinese government locked down the city, quarantining 11 million people in Wuhan. Eventually, the lockdown would include almost 60 million people in the province of Hubei.

Industrial operations in the coronavirus hot spot ground to a halt and travel restrictions within China meant that air, rail and road traffic were paused or scaled back across some regions.

According to Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energyearly March was an unintended climate benefit of the coronavirus lockdowns in Italy. Marco Capovilla / Venezia Pulita

The cloud of nitrogen dioxide that was parked over China in January seemed to evaporate in February. NASA scientists said similar emissions reductions have been observed in other countries during economic disruptions, but the sharp decrease in air pollution in China during the quarantine period was especially rapid.

“This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic dropoff over such a wide area for a specific event,” Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement earlier this month.

Pollution levels have similarly decreased over Italy, which has become the center of the coronavirus pandemic outside China. On March 8, as cases in the