Screenshot of the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on 30 December 2020. Graphic: JHU
Screenshot of the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on 30 December 2020. Graphic: JHU

30 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – 2020 was the year that everybody got cozy with graphs showing exponential growth. A number of high-quality data sources showing the progression of the pandemic were published online, so anybody could rummage through the grim numbers and estimate their local risk.

A few standout sites made it into Desdemona’s daily tour of the morbidity and mortality data, but the COVID-19 Dashboard by John Hopkins University was always the first stop. Indispensable for anyone with a compulsion to follow the pandemic’s progression, the JHU data set is the gold standard for tracking the virus as it colonizes human biomass.

It’s 30 April 2020, and the entire world is under lockdown. Unprecedented measures, aiming to combat a disease we have never seen before. In such conditions of isolation, few resources have proven to be as indispensable as the data collected and provided by the John Hopkins University. Video: JHU

One of the best graphing tools for the JHU data came from Prof. Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, who created 91-Divoc. With these graphs, it’s easy to browse the data by nation and compare which ones are succeeding and which have failed to contain the virus. You can graph daily morbidity and mortality rates, display them by country or U.S. state, and create animated GIFs of your graphs.

Animation showing COVID-19 daily deaths in the Top Ten countries, ‎28‎ ‎February‎ ‎2020 - 30 December 2020 (306 days). Graphic: 91-DIVOC
Animation showing COVID-19 daily deaths in the Top Ten countries, ‎28‎ ‎February‎ ‎2020 – 30 December 2020 (306 days). Graphic: 91-DIVOC

In the U.S., the Covid Act Now map is a great tool for keeping tabs on your county’s progress in containing the virus, showing ICU capacity, infection rates, and daily new cases. Here’s the current dire situation in Los Angeles County, on 30 December 2020:

Covid Act Now daily cases per 100k for Los Angeles County, California, on 30 December 2020. Graphic: Covid Act Now
Covid Act Now daily cases per 100k for Los Angeles County, California, on 30 December 2020. Graphic: Covid Act Now

Meanwhile, the usual anthropogenic catastrophes continued to accelerate, with new temperature records and immense mega-fires becoming the new normal.

  • Global wealth inequality continued to diverge, exacerbated by the virus.
  • The UN actually used the phrase “inflection point” to describe the reversal of fortune in improving undernourishment globally.
  • The pandemic caused human carbon emissions to dip, but they showed signs of recovering to business-as-usual levels pretty quickly.
  • Satellite imagery and ground-based photos show the stark difference in pollution levels when the world’s industrial infrastructure is largely idled.

But possibly the most evocative graph arrived late in the year, showing a new angle on another exponential curve, the so-called “Great Acceleration”:

Biomass (dry and wet), anthropogenic mass and anthropogenic mass waste estimates since the beginning of the twentieth century. Green lines show the total weight of biomass (± 1 s.d.). Anthropogenic mass weight is plotted as an area chart. The wet-weight estimate is based on the results presented in Fig. 1 and the respective water content of major components. The year 2013±5 marks the time at which the dry biomass is exceeded by the anthropogenic mass, including waste. The years 2037±10 and 2031±9 mark the times at which the wet biomass is exceeded by the anthropogenic mass and the total produced anthropogenic mass, respectively. The uncertainties of the years of intersection were derived using a Monte Carlo simulation, with 10,000 repeats (seeMethods). Weights are extrapolated for the years 2015–2037 (lighter area). Graphic: Elhacham, et al., 2020 / Nature
Biomass (dry and wet), anthropogenic mass and anthropogenic mass waste estimates since the beginning of the twentieth century. Green lines show the total weight of biomass (± 1 s.d.). Anthropogenic mass weight is plotted as an area chart. Graphic: Elhacham, et al., 2020 / Nature

This study finds that the mass of human-made materials now equals the total biomass of the entire planet, and this “anthropogenic mass” is doubling every twenty years. After reading this paper, my first reaction was that we may yet see Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel come to pass.

The first installment of Isaac Asimov’s novel, “The Caves of Steel”, took the cover of the October 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller. Graphic: Ed Emshwiller / Galaxy Science Fiction
The first installment of Isaac Asimov’s novel, The Caves of Steel, took the cover of the October 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller. Graphic: Ed Emshwiller / Galaxy Science Fiction

U.S. Covid mortality rate exceeds 100 per 100k population – “The current exponential increase in COVID-19 is reaching a calamitous scale”

U.S. COVID-19 mortality per 100,000 population, 11 April 2020 - 25 December 2020. Data: Johns Hopkins University. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

Tax breaks for the rich don’t boost the economy – “Our research shows that the economic case for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak”

Distribution of major tax cuts for the rich across OECD nations, 1965-2015. This figure visualizes the resulting binary variable that picks out years in which taxes on the rich were reduced substantially. In total, we identify 30 country-year observations where taxes on the rich were significantly reduced. Governments enacted major tax reforms in all countries in our sample and across the whole observation period. Many countries implemented major tax cuts for the rich in the late 1980s. Furthermore, the identification of tax cuts is also in line with previous studies that have focused on income tax progressivity (Rubolino and Waldenström, 2020) or on overall tax progressivity single specific countries (Saez and Zucman, 2019). For instance, echoing these authors’ findings, we find two major reforms that reduced taxes on the rich in the US: 1982 (First Reagan Tax Cut) and 1986/1987 (Second Reagan Tax Cut). Graphic: Hope and Limberg, 2020 / LSE

2020 Year in Review: The global economic impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts

Shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors from 2020 through 2022. This animation shows the shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors-from 2020 through 2022. It reflects projected debt service payments on external debt to official bilateral creditors (TDS, current US$, millions). Debt service to official bilateral creditors will impose a heavy burden for years to come. Graphic: World Bank Group

Red Cross faced record number of climate-related disasters in 2020 – “This year has tested the resilience of tens of millions of people to breaking point”

Map showing highest-impact disasters in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic (over 250,000 people affected). The map shows only a snapshot of disasters that took place from the beginning of the month when the epidemic was declared (March 2020) for a six-month period. More than 100 disasters occurred during this period and affected over 50 million people. There were also a number of ongoing crises, including measles in DRC and droughts in parts of east and southern Africa. Graphic: IFRC

Broken societies put people and planet on a collision course, says UNDP – “No country in the world has yet achieved very high human development without putting immense strain on the planet”

Projected geographical shift of the human temperature niche. (Top) Geographical position of the human temperature niche projected on the current situation (A) and the RCP8.5 projected 2070 climate (B). Those maps represent relative human distributions (summed to unity) for the imaginary situation that humans would be distributed over temperatures following the stylized double Gaussian model fitted to the modern data (the blue dashed curve in Fig. 2A). (C) Difference between the maps, visualizing potential source (orange) and sink (green) areas for the coming decades if humans were to be relocated in a way that would maintain this historically stable distribution with respect to temperature. The dashed line in A and B indicates the 5% percentile of the probability distribution. Graphic: Xu, et al., 2020 / PNAS

Sea ice loss and extreme wildfires mark another year of Arctic change – “The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen, and biologically changed region is well underway”

Map showing the age of sea ice in the Arctic at winter maximum in 2000 (left, week of March 18) and 2020 (right, week of March 21). Ice older than 5 years (white) is very rare today; only a small ribbon remains along the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Age is a stand-in for ice thickness and durability; young ice is thinner and more likely to melt in the summer. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Graphic: NOAA

COVID lockdown causes record drop in carbon dioxide emissions for 2020

The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020 - a record drop according to researchers at the University of East Anglia, University of Exeter and the Global Carbon Project. It means that in 2020 fossil CO2 emissions are predicted to be approximately 34 GtCO2, seven per cent lower than in 2019. Emissions from transport account for the largest share of the global decrease. Those from surface transport, such as car journeys, fell by approximately half at the peak of the COVID lockdowns. Total CO2 emissions from human activities - from fossil CO2 and land-use change - are set to be around 39 GtCO2 in 2020. Video: UEA

Global inequality data update shows rise in concentration of U.S. incomes unseen in other rich nations – Latin America and the Middle East stand as the world’s most unequal regions

Income inequality in the United States, 1913-2019. The U.S. shows a rise in the concentration of incomes unseen in other rich nations. The top 10% increase from 34% to 45% between 1980 and 2019. Half of the American population was shut from pretax economic growth. Graphic: World Inequality Database

The mass of human-made materials now equals the planet’s biomass – “Anthropogenic” mass is doubling every twenty years

Biomass and anthropogenic mass estimates since the beginning of the twentieth century on a dry-mass basis. The green line shows the total weight of thebiomass (dashed green lines, ±1 s.d.). Anthropogenic mass weight is plotted as an area chart, where the heights of the coloured areas represent the mass of the corresponding category accumulated until that year. The anthropogenic mass presented here is grouped into six major categories. The year 2020±6 marks the time at which biomass is exceeded by anthropogenic mass. Anthropogenic mass data since 1900 were obtained from ref. 22, at a single-year resolution. The current biomass value is based on ref. 11, which for plants relies on the estimate of ref. 10, which updates earlier, mostly higher estimates. The uncertainty of the year of intersection was derived using a Monte Carlo simulation, with 10,000 repeats. Data were extrapolated for the years 2015–2025 (lighter area). Graphic: Elhacham, et al., 2020 / Nature

Global November temperatures reached a record high in 2020 – Europe experienced its warmest autumn on record

Map showing surface air temperature anomaly for November 2020 relative to the November average for the period 1981-2010. Data source: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

Climate change now top threat to natural World Heritage sites – Great Barrier Reef declines to “critical” status

Overall state of all natural World Heritage sites in 2014, 2017, and 2020. Graphic: IUCN

U.S. job market slowed further in November 2020 – “We’re going to have a few of the toughest months of this pandemic, and there will be a lot of scars left to heal”

Cumulative change in U.S. jobs since before the pandemic, 6 December 2020. Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Graphic: Ella Koeze / The New York Times

Tire dust killing coho salmon returning to Puget Sound, new research shows – “I find it incredibly sad to watch the adults when they are sick”

Environmental relevance of 6PPD-quinone. (A) Using retrospective UPLC-HRMS analysis of archived sample extracts, 6PPD-quinone was quantified in roadway runoff and runoff-impacted receiving waters. Each symbol corresponds to duplicate or triplicate samples, boxes represent first and third quartiles. For comparison, the 0.8 pg/L LC50 value for juvenile coho salmon and detected 6PPD-quinone levels in 250 and 1000 mg/L TWP leachate are included. (B) Predicted ranges of potential 6PPD-quinone mass formation in passenger cars (e.g., 4 tires, -36 kg tire rubber mass) and heavy trucks, (e.g., 18 tires, -900 kg of tire rubber) (represented in orange) and measured 6PPD-quinone concentrations in affected environmental compartments (represented in blue, with experimental data italicized). Predicted ranges reflect calculations applying 0.4-2% 6PPD per total vehicle tire rubber mass followed by various yield scenarios (1-75% ultimate yields) for 6PPD reaction with ground-level ozone to form 6PPD-quinone. Graphic: Tian, et al. / Science

WMO: 2020 on track to be one of three warmest years on record – More than 80 percent of the global ocean experienced a marine heatwave in 2020

Global map of temperature anomalies relative to the 1981-2010 long-term average from the ERA5 reanalysis for January to October 2020. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

Graph of the Day: Covid-19 daily deaths in Sweden, compared with neighboring countries

New deaths from COVID-19 per day, normalized by population, for Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Data: Johns Hopkins University CSSE. Graphic: 91-Divoc

U.S. adult obesity rate tops 40 percent, highest ever recorded – Obesity is single highest risk factor in COVID-19 mortality – “That’s extremely alarming in terms of its medical implications”

U.S. adult obesity rate by state, 2019. Graphic: Trust for America’s Health

August 2020 was the world’s second-warmest August on record – The year 2020 has more than a 99.9 percent chance to rank among the five warmest years on record

August 2020 blended land and sea surface temperature percentiles. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen – California fire carbon emissions in 2020 exceed previous record by nearly 2 times

The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this extremely think blanket of smoke along the West Coast on 9 September 2020. OMPS measured smoke clouds over the western U.S. with higher aerosol index values than anything Colin Seftor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says he has ever seen with the instrument. Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

California heatwaves are becoming more frequent and lasting longer – “This has serious consequences for the fire season in Southern California”

Air temperatures across the United States on 6 September 2020, when much of the Southwest roasted in a dramatic heatwave. The map was derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model and represents temperatures at 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) above the ground. The darkest red areas are where the model shows temperatures surpassing 113°F (45°C). Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Autumn could deliver the worst of California’s 2020 fire season – A scorching Labor Day weekend brought an all-time record heat and unprecedented fire spread, but fire risks climb in the fall

On 9 September 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of thick smoke streaming from a line of intense fires in Oregon and California. Many communities in the region are facing extremely poor and sometimes hazardous air quality. Data: NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Photo: Lauren Dauphin / NASA

UN report sends “sobering message” of deeply entrenched hunger globally – Number of undernourished people in the world continued to increase in 2019

Number of global undernourished, 2010-2020 and projected to 2030 under three Covid scenarios. Graphic: UNFAO

Highest number of land and environmental activists murdered in one year – In 2019, 212 people were killed for peacefully defending their homes and standing up to the destruction of nature

A Brazilian Indigenous leader of the Guajajara tribe attends a meeting calling on EU lawmakers to exert pressure on the Brazilian government to protect the rights of indigenous communities, 12 November 2019. Photo: Thomas Samson / AFP

UK temperature records smashed in 2019 – “Our report shows climate change is exerting an increasing impact on the UK’s climate”

Annual T mean (°C) for the UK and countries, 1884–2019, expressed as anomalies relative to the 1981–2010 average. The hatched black line is the 1981–2010 long‐term average. The lower hatched green line is the 1961–1990 long‐term average. Light grey grid‐lines represent anomalies of ±1°C. The table provides average values (°C). Graphic: Kendon, et al., 2020 / International Journal of Climatology

UN World Drug Report 2020: Global drug use increased 30 percent from 2009 – COVID-19 has far reaching impact on global drug markets

Map showing the most commonly used opioid, 2018 or latest available data. Data: UNODC, responses to the annual report questionnaire. Graphic: UNODC

Annual U.S. honey bee survey shows Summer 2019 marked highest colony losses ever recorded

Total summer (yellow bars; 1 April – 1 October), winter (gray; 1 October – 1 April), and annual (orange bars; 1 October – 1 October) honey bee colony loss rates in the United States across years of the Bee Informed Partnership’s national honey bee colony loss survey, 2007/2008-2019/2020. Results from the inaugural survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America and performed in 2006-07 are not included. Graphic: The Bee Informed Partnership

UN World Economic Situation report: Global economy to contract by 3.2 percent in 2020 – 34 million people to fall below the extreme poverty line

World gross product, level and annual changes, 2010–2020 and projected through 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed large parts of the global economy, sharply restricting economic activities, increasing uncertainties and unleashing a recession unseen since the Great Depression. Global gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to shrink by 3.2 per cent in 2020, with only a gradual recovery of lost output projected for 2021. Cumulatively, the world economy is expected to lose nearly $8.5 trillion in output in 2020 and 2021, nearly wiping out the cumulative output gains of the previous four years. Data: UN DESA, based on scenarios produced with the World Economic Forecasting Model (WEFM). Graphic: UN DESA

Hottest Arctic temperature record probably set with 100-degree reading in Siberia

Arctic temperature departures from average for 21 June 2020, showing extreme temperatures in Siberia and parts of Canada. The northeastern Siberian town of Verkhoyansk is likely to have set a record for the highest temperature documented in the Arctic Circle, with a reading of 100.4 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded Saturday, 20 June 2020. Graphic: Climate Reanalyzer

UN refugee report 2020: 1 percent of humanity now displaced, doubling since 2010 – “Forced displacement now is not only vastly more widespread but is no longer a short-term and temporary phenomenon”

Forcibly displaced people worldwide, 1990-2019. At the end of 2019, nearly 80 million people were displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or events seriously disturbing public order. Forced displacement is now affecting more than one per cent of humanity – 1 in every 97 people – and with fewer and fewer of those who flee being able to return home. Graphic: UNHCR

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020: Carbon emissions increase for another year, coal still the single largest source of power generation

World consumption of primary energy in exajoules, 1994-2019. Primary energy consumption rose by 1.3 percent in 2019, less than half its rate in 2018 (2.8 percent). Growth was driven by renewables (3.2 EJ) and natural gas (2.8 EJ), which  together contributed three quarters of the increase. All fuels grew at a slower rate than their 10-year averages, apart from nuclear, with coal consumption falling for the fourth time in six years (-0.9 EJ). By region, consumption fell in North America, Europe and CIS, and growth was below average in South and Central America. In the other regions, growth was roughly in line with historical averages. China was the biggest individual driver of primary energy growth, accounting for more than three  quarters of net global growth. Oil continues to hold the largest share of the energy mix (33.1 percent). Coal is the  second largest fuel but lost share in 2019 to account for 27.0 percent, its lowest  level since 2003. The share of both natural gas and renewables rose to record highs of 24.2 percent and 5.0 percent respectively. Renewables has now overtaken nuclear, which makes up only 4.3 percent of the energy mix. The share of hydroelectricity has been stable at around 6 percent for several years. Graphic: BP

14 straight months of rising Amazon deforestation in Brazil

Accumulated Amazon deforestation Jan-Apr, 2009-2020. Data: INPE. Graphic: Mongabay

Global peacefulness falls for the fourth time in the last five years – “We find ourselves at a critical juncture”

Map showing the Global Peace Index for 2020. The average level of global peacefulness deteriorated 0.34 percent on the 2020 GPI. This is the ninth time in the last 12 years that global peacefulness has deteriorated. Graphic: Institute for Economics and Peace

May 2020 was hottest May on record – “The really large anomalies started during January, and since then this signal has been quite persistent”

Map showing surface air temperature anomaly for May 2020 relative to the May average for the period 1981-2010. May 2020 was the hottest May on record. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

Millennials are the unluckiest generation in U.S. history – “It’s not just that it’s a bad recession, and that it’s hitting young people more, but that it’s hitting people who have already been hit”

Growth in U.S. economic output for ten generations. This graph shows how much inflation-adjusted gross domestic product per person grew during each generation's first fifteen years in the workforce, starting at age 18, averaged across all the birth years within each generation. Data are adjusted for population. Graphic: The Washington Post

NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index reached another record high in 2019 – Total direct radiative forcing has increased 45 percent since 1990

Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), 1750-2019. For 2019, the AGGI was a record high 1.45, representing an increase in total direct radiative forcing of 45% since 1990. The increase in radiative forcing from CO2 alone since 1990 was 60.6%. Pre-1978 changes in the CO2-equivalent abundance and AGGI are based on the ongoing measurements of all greenhouse gases reported here, measurements of CO2 going back to the 1950s from C.D. Keeling (Keeling et al., 1958), and atmospheric changes derived from air trapped in ice and snow above glaciers (Machida et al., 1995, Battle et al., 1996, Etheridge, et al., 1996; Butler, et al., 1999). Equivalent CO2 atmospheric amounts (in ppm) are derived with the relationship between CO2 concentrations and radiative forcing from all long-lived greenhouse gases. Graphic: Butler and Montzka, 2020 / NOAA

Dangerous humid heat extremes occurring decades earlier than expected – “We are already locked in to large increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme humid heat events, and the risk is much larger than most people appreciate”

Map showing observed global extreme humid heat. Color symbols represent the 99.9th percentile of observed daily maximum TW for 1979–2017 for HadISD stations with at least 50 percent data availability over this period. Marker size is inversely proportional to station density. Graphic: Raymond, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

COVID-19 crisis causes 17 percent drop in global carbon emissions – “The drop in emissions is substantial but illustrates the challenge of reaching our Paris climate commitments”

Map showing change in global daily fossil CO2 emissions, 1 January 2020 - 20 May 2020 Video: Le Quéré, et al., 2020 / Nature Climate Change

U.S. unemployment rate soars to 14.7 percent, the worst since the Great Depression – “This is a catastrophe. When things go over a cliff, they usually they don’t recover quickly.”

Monthly job gains or losses in the U.S., from 1939 to 30 April 2020. Data: U.S. Labor Department. Graphic: The Washington Post

Before-and-after photos show dramatic decline in air pollution around the world during coronavirus lockdown

View of air pollution in Moscow, Russia on 6 August 2010 and 20 April 2020. Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova / Niklas Halle'n / AFP / Getty Images

Arctic ozone depletion tracks at record levels in Spring 2020

Total column ozone field (in Dobson Units) from CAMS, 1 April 2020 - 6 April 2020, showing values below 250 DU over large parts of the Arctic. Video: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service / ECMWF

Miami is shattering heat records during a wildly-warm start to 2020 – Most of Florida has endured record heat in the past four weeks

Simulated high temperatures in Florida on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 by the American NAM model. Graphic: WeatherBell

10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed – “I’m concerned that in the industry, the lessons aren’t fully learned — that we’re tending to backslide”

Aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeast tip of Louisiana, 21 April 2010. Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

U.S. debt to exceed the size of the economy in 2020 – Budget deficits will total more than $3.8 trillion – “At some point, such high and rising deficits and debt levels will prove unsustainable, and corrective action will be needed”

U.S. Federal deficit as percent of GDP, 2010-2019 and projected to 2025. Total U.S. debt is projected to equal the size of the entire economy in 2020. Graphic: CRFB

IMF: Global economy will suffer worst year since Great Depression – “This is a crisis like no other”

Global real GDP level projected to 2021. The cumulative output loss is expected to reach $9 trillion. Graphic: IMF

More than 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March 2020 – 20 million Americans predicted to be out of work by July in “best case” scenario – “We’ve never seen anything like this”

Weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance, 1967 - 28 March 2020. More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. In two weeks, nearly all the jobs created in the past five years have been erased. Data: Labor Department / FRED. Graphic: The Washington Post

Tracking mobile phone location data of Florida beachgoers during Spring break shows potential coronavirus spread

Map showing secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during Spring break 2020, tracked as they went across the U.S. Graphic: Tectonix

Coronavirus pandemic could have caused 40 million deaths globally if left unchecked – “Health systems in all countries will be quickly overwhelmed”

Confirmed COVID-19 cases on 26 March 2020 in China, Italy, France, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Graphic: Mark Handley / UCL

World passes 500,000 coronavirus cases – U.S. overtakes Italy and China with most cases globally

Coronavirus COVID-19 global cases, 26 Mar 2020. Graphic: Center for Systems Science and Engineering CSSE at Johns Hopkins University

Satellite images show less pollution over the U.S. as coronavirus shuts down public places

Satellite view of airborne nitrogen dioxide pollution over Washington State in March 2020, compared with March 2019. Pollution is visibly reduced by the cessation of economic activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Data: Descartes Labs / Sentinel-5P satellite. Graphic: CNN

World Happiness Report 2020: Rapid increase in negative affect over last decade continues, driven by sadness, worry, and anger

Nations ranked by happiness, 2017-2019. Graphic: World Happiness Report 2020

Graph of the Day: The staggering rise in U.S. jobless claims, 19 March 2020

Weekly initial unemployment claims 2000 - 18 Mar 2020 for California, Ohio, Minnesota, and Rhode Island. Graphic: The New York Times

February 2020 second warmest on record globally

Blended land and sea surface temperature anomalies and percentiles, February 2020. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

U.S. lags in coronavirus testing after slow response to outbreak

Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and daily testing in the U.S., Italy, and South Korea, 17 March 2020. Delays in testing in the United States set back the nation’s response to the pandemic, even though its first case was discovered around the same time that South Korea’s was. Graphic: The New York Times

A chilling scientific paper helped upend U.S. and U.K. coronavirus strategies – “Even if all patients were able to be treated, there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in Great Britain, and 1.2 million in the U.S.”

Modeled deaths per day and total deaths in the U.S. and Great Britain from unmitigated COVID-19 epidemic. Model published on 16 March 2020. Graphic: Ferguson, et al., 2020 / Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team

Graph of the Day: Worldwide COVID-19 cases surpass China cases

COVID-19 cases in mainland China (orange) and worldwide (yellow), 20 January 2020 - 15 March 2020. Graphic: Johns Hopkins University

Fanning the Flames: How executives continue to be rewarded to produce more oil and gas at odds with the energy transition

Paying with fire: Most oil and gas executives are rewarded for chasing growth, but shareholders could get burned. Graphic: Carbon Tracker Initiative

Graph of the Day: U.S household debt, 1945-2018

U.S household debt to 2019. Data: New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP). Graphic: Haughwout, et al., 2019 / Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Ecosystems the size of Amazon rainforest “can collapse within decades”

Empirical relationship between system area and regime shift duration in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial systems. Graphic: Cooper, et al., 2020 / Nature Communications

Thousands of Mexican women strike to protest femicide – “Every day we have more evidence that they are killing us specifically for being women”

Number of women murdered in Mexico, 2016-2019. In 2019, 1,006 women were victims of femicide – 580 more than in 2015. Data: Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Safety (SESNSP). Graphic: The Guardian

Taking an Uber or Lyft pollutes more than driving, California finds – “For a one-mile trip, on average there’s another 0.7 miles of driving around to deliver that trip”

Carbon emissions (CO2e) from different modes of transportation. Non-pooled ride hailing, like with Uber and lyft, emits the most carbon, by a wide margin. Graphic: UCS

Spring 2020 in southern U.S. arrives earlier than ever recorded, adding to climate trend

Spring leaf index anomaly in the continental United States, 1 January 2020 - 7 March 2020. In parts of the Southeast U.S., the arrival of spring in 2020 is the earliest in the 39-year record. Graphic: National Phenology Network

Big freeze to grip Britain before weekend downpour hits – 178 flood alerts still in effect

Aerial view of a house in the East Yorkshire town of Snaith that been devastated by flooding in February 2020. Photo: Getty Images

Major wind-driven ocean currents are shifting toward the poles – “Over the past 40 years, all eight wind-driven surface current systems had shifted poleward”

Observational and modeled climatology (contours) and trends (shading) of the zonal component of the near ocean surface wind. (a) Ensemble trends of the zonal near ocean surface wind based on the NCEP/NCAR, NCEP/DOE and NERA‐Interim reanalysis data sets covering 1979–2018. Stippling indicates regions where the trends pass the 95 percent confidence level (Student's t test). (b) Zonal near ocean surface wind change in the doubled CO2 simulations relative to the pre‐industrial control simulation carried out by AWI‐CM. Stippling indicates areas where the magnitude of the trend is larger than the standard deviation of the local variability. The subpanel at the right side of each graph shows the zonally averaged climatology (blue) and trend (red) of zonal near ocean surface wind. Graphic: Yang, et al., 2020 / Geophysical Research Letters

The boreal winter season 19/20 was by far the warmest winter season ever recorded in Europe – “Europe has been experiencing its mildest winter on record”

Surface air temperature anomaly for February 2020 relative to the average for the period 1981-2010. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

Winter 2019/2020 warmest on record in Moscow, first winter to average above freezing – Temperature milestones set across Europe and North America – German ice wine harvest fails for first time on record

Map showing Arctic temperature anomalies for December 2019, January 2020, and February 2020. Mainland Alaska and northwest Canada, along with parts of Greenland and Svalbard were the primary high latitude areas that were consistently colder than average during winter 2019/2020. Northern Eurasia was outlandishly mild. Graphic: Karsten Haustein / Twitter

Wettest February on record in UK – 77 flood warnings issued with hours until water levels hit peak – 15 rivers hit their highest levels on record

Aerial view of flooding in Snaith, Yorkshire, UK, 1 March 2020. Video: Sky News

Airborne nitrogen dioxide plummets over China as quarantine shuts down industry

These maps show nitrogen dioxide (NO2) values across China from 1 January 2020 to 20 January 2020 (before the quarantine) and 10 February 2020 to 25 February 2020 (during the quarantine). The data were collected by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on ESA’s Sentinel-5 satellite. A related sensor, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite, has been making similar measurements. Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

The “blue acceleration”: Study shows humans’ surging incursions into the sea

The Blue Acceleration: global trends in human exploitation of ocean resources. Graphic: Jouffray, et al., 2020 / One Earth

January 2020 was the warmest January on record for the globe

Map showing land and ocean global temperature percentiles and departures from average for January 2020. The January 2020 global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest in the 141-year record at 2.05°F (1.14°C) above the 20th century average of 53.6°F (12.0°C). This value surpassed the previous record set in 2016 by only 0.04°F (0.02°C). Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

U.N. warns that runaway inequality is destabilizing the world’s democracies – “Efforts to reduce inequality will inevitably challenge the interests of certain individuals and groups. At their core, they affect the balance of power.”

Map showing climate risk by country, 2017. The climate risk of each country is based on its ND-GAIN Index score for 2017. The ND-GAIN Index is a composite measure, with a range of 0-100, of a country’s vulnerability to climate change and its readiness to improve resilience. Vulnerability is quantified by the level of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of six life-supporting sectors (food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat and infrastructure). Readiness measures a country’s ability to realize adaptive actions in the economic, governance and social spheres. Data: University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative Index (available at https://gain.nd.edu/). Graphic: UNDESA

Image of the Day: Antarctica melts under its hottest days on record

Satellite images acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) show melting on the ice cap of Eagle Island, Antarctica on 4 February 2020 and 13 February 2020. Photo: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Massacre in Nicaragua: Four indigenous community members killed for their land

Satellite images taken one month apart, on 25 December 2019 and 26 January 2020, show a big recent jump in clearing activity (indicated by yellow circles) in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve around the indigenous community of Alal, Nicaragua. Source: Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8, accessed through Global Forest Watch. Graphic: Mongabay

Graph of the Day: The Future of Ocean Acidification

Spatial distribution of global surface ocean pHT (total hydrogen scale, annually averaged) in past (1770), present (2000) and future (2100) under the IPCC RCP8.5 scenario. Graphic: Jiang, et al., 2020 / Nature Scientific Reports

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

January 2020 warmest on record in Europe – Earth matched its warmest January on record – “The lack of snow and the warmth is really unheard of. Monthly records were not just broken, they were shattered with large margins.”

Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2020 relative to the January average for the period 1981-2010. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

January 2020 sees warmest winter in U.S. history so far

Average U.S. temperature for December and January combined, from December-January 1895-96 to 2019-20. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

Obscure investment fund uses UK aid money to finance fossil fuel projects – “A farcical situation where the Government, on one hand, spends aid money to mitigate climate change, and on the other hand finances fossil fuels all over the world”

Breakdown of total fossil fuel support in PIDG, 2002-2018, by sub-sector ($USD). Data: Source: Private Infrastructure Development Group Annual Report 2018. Graphic: Global Witness

New international report on health care: U.S. suicide rate highest among wealthy nations – U.S. outspends other high-income countries on health care but has lowest life expectancy

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes. Graphic: Commonwealth Fund

U.S. life expectancy ticks up as drug fatalities and cancer deaths drop – “We still have a very bleak situation at this point”

Life expectancy and health spending as a share of gross domestic product in the U.S. compared with the average of countries in the OECD, 1980-2018. Data: OECD.Stat / National Center for Health Statistics. Graphic: Harry Stevens / The Washington Post

Empty nets and tropical fish in Tasmania as climate change hits Southern Ocean

Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Tasmania on November 23, 2010-2017. Data: Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). Graphic: The Sydney Morning Herald

Dungeness crab larvae already showing effects of coastal acidification – “We found dissolution impacts to the crab larvae that were not expected to occur until much later in this century”

External carapace and pereopod exoskeleton of the Dungeness crab megalopae (a) in its undamaged form (b, c) and with dissolution presence ranging from mild (Stage 1; d) to severe (Stage 2; e, f) patterns showing similarity in the structural damages (g) or exposed crystals (h). Indicated is the scale of the measurements (μm). The undamaged megalopae originated from the offshore or northwards habitats characterized by low ∆Ωcal,60 vertical gradients, while the most severely affected megalopae came from the nearshore or coastal habitats with steep ∆Ωcal,60 conditions. Photo: Bednaršek, et al., 2020 / Science of The Total Environment

Australia bushfires contribute to big rise in global CO₂ levels in 2020

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations, 2014-2019 and projected through 2020. Forecast (red) CO2 concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory, with previous forecasts (blue) are compared to observations (black). The forecast uncertainty range (orange) based on the SST forecast is ± 2 standard deviations. Graphic: Met Office

Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight – “We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds”

The hands of the Doomsday Clock move to within 100 seconds of midnight, closer to midnight than at any point since its creation in 1947, 23 January 2020. Graphic: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Some say we’ve seen bushfires worse than this before. But they’re ignoring a few key facts.

Winter rainfall in eastern Australia, 1900–2019. The unprecedented lack of winter rains in 2017, 2018, and 2019, and Australia’s hottest summer on record, contributed to the extreme drought that affected 100 percent of New South Wales and 67.4 percent of Queensland in 2019 and 2020. Graphic: Bureau of Meteorology

Earth had its hottest decade on record in 2010s – “2020 is off to a horrifying climate start, and I fear what the rest of the year will bring to our doorsteps”

Global average surface temperature, 1880-2019. The 2010-2019 decade was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record in 2019. Data: NOAA / NCEI. Graphic: AP

These are the biggest risks facing our world in 2019 – “Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe”

The Global Risks Report’s top 10 risks for 2019, ranked by likelihood and impact, shed light on significant trends that may shape global development over the next 10 years. Graphic: World Economic Forum

Australia fire smoke will complete a full circuit of Earth, NASA says

Satellite photography and UV aerosol index showing smoke from the Australia bushfires being transported across the Atlantic Ocean from 27 December 2019 to 8 Kanuary 2020. Graphic: Colin Seftor / NASA

Huge “hot blob” in Pacific Ocean caused mass starvation in largest seabird die-off – “The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent”

On 1 January 2016 and 2 January 2016, 6,540 common murre carcasses were found washed ashore near Whitter, Alaska, translating into about 8,000 bodies per mile of shoreline — one of the highest beaching rates recorded during the mass mortality event. Photo: David B. Irons

Europe’s demographic time-bomb – While global population is ageing, continent presents extreme example of this trend

Total world fertility rates and median age by region, 1955-2030. Data: UN population projections. Graphic: Alan Smith / Financial Times

Second wettest year in U.S. history – Warmest year on record in Alaska

Precipitation averages in the contiguous U.S. for overlapping two-year calendar periods, 1895-2019. The period 2018-19 was the wettest of these, with 69.43” coming in well above the previous record of 68.62” from 1982-83. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

Preliminary U.S. carbon emissions estimates for 2019 – Coming up short on climate targets

Net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2005-2019. Graphic: Rhodium Group

Tropical cyclones causing billions in losses dominated the natural catastrophe picture of 2019 – “Cyclones are becoming more frequently associated with extreme precipitation”

Worldwide natural catastrophe loss events in 2019. Tropical cyclones, extreme storms, and floods caused overall losses of $150 billion. Video: Munich RE

The sad truth about our boldest climate target – Limiting global warming to 1.5˚C is almost certainly not going to happen. Admitting this need not end hope.

Animation showing pathways for reducing carbon emissions to prevent breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target by year, 2000-2019. Graphic: Carbon Brief

2010-2019: Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires – “The climate of the 20th Century is gone. We’re in a new neighborhood.”

Global surface temperature anomalies, 1880-2019, compared with the 1880-1899 average. The year 2019 was the second warmest year on record, capping the warmest decade since measurements began. Data: Gavin Schmidt / NASA GISTEMP. Graphic: InsideClimate

The signal of human-caused climate change has emerged in everyday weather, study finds – “Weather is climate change if you look over the whole globe”

Distribution of local and global daily temperature anomalies for the 1951-1980 and 2009-2018 periods. The trend toward warming is clear in the global daily averages. Graphic: Sippel, et al., 2020 / Nature Climate Change

2019 was hottest year on record in Russia, 2nd hottest in Arctic Circle – Warmest New Year’s Eve on record in Anchorage

Arctic surface temperature anomaly, 1958-2019, relative to the 1981-2010 baseline. Data: NOAA/ESRL Physical Science Division (WRIT Tool: +67°N). Graphic: Zachary Labe

“Sub-alpine savannas” replace forests in the Victorian Alps as global warming drives fire frequency

Map centered on the Hotham and Bogong High Plains area in the Victorian Alps showing the extent of the fires from the 1970-2000 period to early January 2020. Graphic: Dr Tom Fairman / Twitter

Australia heatwave: Canberra and Penrith smash temperature records that stood for 80 years

Map of daily average temperatures across Australia on 3 January 2020. It was the hottest ever day recorded in Greater Sydney Penrith was hottest place on Earth. The BOM recorded a maximum temperature of 48.9C at 3pm. The previous record of 47.3C was set in January 2018 Graphic: BOM / Prof. Ray Wills

Water shortages dog Panama Canal, 20 years after its transfer – “It really has been the driest dry season we’ve had in the history of the canal”

A cargo ship transits the Panama Canal on 21 April 2019 on its way to the Atlantic Ocean, while tree trunks that used to be submerged are exposed due to the low water levels of Gatún lake, Panama. An intense drought related to this year’s El Niño phenomenon has precipitously lowered the level of Panama’s Gatún Lake, forcing the country’s Canal Authority to impose draft limits this week on ships moving through the waterway’s recently expanded locks. Photo: Arnulfo Franco / AP Photo

EIA projects nearly 50 percent increase in world energy usage by 2050, led by growth in Asia – Carbon dioxide emissions to grow from all three fossil fuel sources

Global primary energy consumption by region, 2010-2050. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook 2019 reference case. Graphic: EIA