Figure 1.

The impact of coronavirus outbreak on atmospheric pollution and resource/energy consumption: a) the decline of mean tropospheric NO₂ (μmol/m²), a major air pollutant, in Eastern China from January to February 2020 (adapted from NASA²); b) the drop of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂) over Italy, particularly in Pianura Padana, seen from the Sentinel-5P satellite between January and March 2020 (adapted from ESA³); c) the reduction of air-particle (PM10; μg/m³) over Lombardia and Milan (Italy) in just 10 days after the area shut down (adapted from ARPA Lombardia⁴); d) the variation in 7-days moving average of commercial flights from 2019 to 2020 detected by Flighradar24⁵; e) the daily coal use by six main power companies before and after the Chinese New Year (dashed red line) has not recovered in 2020 after the holidays, when most business close down, as in the period 2014-2020 (adapted from CREA¹); f) the global oil demand (historical; grey histograms) from 2011 to 2019 is expected in 2020-2025 to show a decreasing trend (dashed red line) due to 2020 negative consumption (in thousand barrels of oil per day, mb/d; adapted from IEA⁶)