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Many regions of the world are now facing more frequent and unprecedentedly large wildfires. However, the association between wildfire-related PM2·5 and mortality has not been well characterised. We aimed to comprehensively assess the association between short-term exposure to wildfire-related PM2·5 and mortality across various regions of the world.

The considerable cessation of human activities during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected global energy use and CO2 emissions. Here we show the unprecedented decrease in global fossil CO2 emissions from January to April 2020 was of 7.8% (938 Mt CO2 with a +6.8% of 2-{\sigma} uncertainty) when compared with the period last year. In addition other emerging estimates of COVID impacts based on monthly energy supply or estimated parameters, this study contributes to another step that constructed the near-real-time daily CO2 emission inventories based on activity from power generation (for 29 countries), industry (for 73 countries), road transportation (for 406 cities), aviation and maritime transportation and commercial and residential sectors emissions (for 206 countries). The estimates distinguished the decline of CO2 due to COVID-19 from the daily, weekly and seasonal variations as well as the holiday events. The COVID-related decreases in CO2 emissions in road transportation (340.4 Mt CO2, -15.5%), power (292.5 Mt CO2, -6.4% compared to 2019), industry (136.2 Mt CO2, -4.4%), aviation (92.8 Mt CO2, -28.9%), residential (43.4 Mt CO2, -2.7%), and international shipping (35.9Mt CO2, -15%). Regionally, decreases in China were the largest and earliest (234.5 Mt CO2,-6.9%), followed by Europe (EU-27 & UK) (138.3 Mt CO2, -12.0%) and the U.S. (162.4 Mt CO2, -9.5%). The declines of CO2 are consistent with regional nitrogen oxides concentrations observed by satellites and ground-based networks, but the calculated signal of emissions decreases (about 1Gt CO2) will have little impacts (less than 0.13ppm by April 30, 2020) on the overserved global CO2 concertation. However, with observed fast CO2 recovery in China and partial re-opening globally, our findings suggest the longer-term effects on CO2 emissions are unknown and should be carefully monitored using multiple measures.

Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 are of paramount importance for global sustainability. Using a coordinated set of high-resolution sectoral assessment tools, we report a decrease of 4.2% in global CO2 emission in first quarter of 2020. Our emission estimates reflect near real time inventories of emissions from power generation, transportation, industry, international aviation and maritime sectors in 34 countries that account for >70% of world energy-related CO2 emissions in recent years. Regional variations in CO2 emissions are significant, with a decrease in China (-9.3%), US (-3.0%), Europe (EU-27 & UK) (-3.3%) and India (-2.4%), respectively. The decline of short-lived gaseous pollutants, such as NO2 concentration observed by Satellites (-25.73% for China, -4.76% for US) and ground observations (-23% for China) is consistent with the estimates based on energy activity (-23.94% for China, -3.52% for US), but the decline is not seen in satellite assessments of aerosol optical depth (AOD) or dry column CO2 (XCO2). With fast recovery and partial re-opening of national economies, our findings suggest that total annual emissions may drop far less than previously estimated (e.g., by 25% for China and more than 5% for the whole world). However, the longer-term effects on CO2 emissions are unknown and should be carefully monitored using multiple measures.