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This paper addresses the important question "Which European areas will be able to better react to the crisis induced by COVID‐19 and how regional disparities will look like?" To provide an answer, a "new normality" scenario is built, comprising the structural changes likely to take place in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. To develop such scenario, two intermediate steps are necessary, in both cases relying on the use of the latest generation of the MAcroeconomic, Sectoral, Social, Territorial (MASST4) model. First, short‐run costs of the COVID‐induced lockdowns, in terms of missed GDP, are calculated for all European NUTS2 regions, needed because of the lack of short‐run statistics about the extent of the regional costs caused by the lockdowns that will only appear in 2 years. Second, a long‐run simulation of the economic rebound expected to take place from 2021 through 2030 is presented, assuming, among other trends, that no further national lockdowns will be undertaken in European countries. In the "new normality" scenario, regional disparity trends will decrease as a result of a decisive rebound of those countries mostly hit by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a few exceptions, most studies on tropospheric ozone (O 3) variability during and following the COrona VIrus Disease (COVID-19) economic downturn focused on high-emission regions or urban environments. In this work, we investigated the impact of the societal restriction measures during the COVID-19 pandemic on surface O 3 at several high-elevation sites across North America and western Europe. Monthly O 3 anomalies were calculated for 2020 and 2021, with respect to the baseline period 2000–2019, to explore the impact of the economic downturn initiated in 2020 and its recovery in 2021. In total, 41 high-elevation sites were analyzed: 5 rural or mountaintop stations in western Europe, 19 rural sites in the western US, 4 sites in the western US downwind of highly polluted source regions, and 4 rural sites in the eastern US, plus 9 mountaintop or high-elevation sites outside Europe and the United States to provide a "global" reference. In 2020, the European high-elevation sites showed persistent negative surface O 3 anomalies during spring (March–May, i.e., MAM) and summer (June–August, i.e., JJA), except for April. The pattern was similar in 2021, except for June. The rural sites in the western US showed similar behavior, with negative anomalies in MAM and JJA 2020 (except for August) and MAM 2021. The JJA 2021 seasonal mean was influenced by strong positive anomalies in July due to large and widespread wildfires across the western US. The polluted sites in the western US showed negative O 3 anomalies during MAM 2020 and a slight recovery in 2021, resulting in a positive mean anomaly for MAM 2021 and a pronounced month-to-month variability in JJA 2021 anomalies. The eastern US sites were also characterized by below-mean O 3 for both MAM and JJA 2020, while in 2021 the negative values exhibited an opposite structure compared to the western US sites, which were influenced by wildfires. Concerning the rest of the world, a global picture could not be drawn, as the sites, spanning a range of different environments, did not show consistent anomalies, with a few sites not experiencing any notable variation. Moreover, we also compared our surface anomalies to the variability of mid-tropospheric O 3 detected by the IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) satellite instrument. Negative anomalies were observed by IASI, consistent with published satellite and modeling studies, suggesting that the anomalies can be largely attributed to the reduction of O 3 precursor emissions in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]