For three days following September 11, 2001, civilian planes were grounded in the United States. It has been postulated that the diurnal temperature range in the U.S. was affected by the lack of contrails created by planes. Contrails, condensation trails, are formed by planes flying at high altitudes. It has been hypothesized that they can act as natural cirrus clouds for at least a short period of time after they form by absorbing long- wave radiation at night and reflecting more shortwave radiation into space throughout the day. Hence they can affect temperatures. The theory that the lack of contrails for three days following 9/11 affected the weather has been disputed though. The three days following the attacks formed a natural experiment that scientists looked at after the fact, but because the planes were only down for three days, that is not much time to have enough data.
Almost the entire world is in the middle of an unprecedented event because of the novel coronavirus often referred to as COVID-19. Anyone who can telework is. People are unfortunately getting either laid off or furloughed because the tourism and entertainment industries have taken such a hit. Restaurants are being forced to close or are only offering carryout service. People are not traveling if they don’t have to either to commute or to go to another city. Governments across the world are telling people to stay home if they are able, or in some cases are ordering them to stay home.
What effect will this have on the environment? Northern Italy has been hard hit by the virus. People in Venice are reporting that the water is the clearest it has been in decades. They are attributing that to the lack of boat traffic. At least initial reports seem to indicate that air pollution has decreased because of lack of vehicle traffic. I am curious though about all the impacts. Vehicle traffic would seem to be the most obvious. Most people are not leaving their house unless they have to, but deliveries may be going up. Airline traffic is definitely down. Train travel is probably down. Inner-city buses and subways are decreasing service due to decreased demand.
What are the other effects though? Water usage may not change in total, but I would hypothesize that it may change temporally. There is a general routine on weekdays. People wake up. Many take showers. They leave their house and go about business. They come home and then start housework among other things like running the dishwasher. Perhaps they do laundry, or perhaps like many the laundry is done on weekends. If a significant portion of the population is teleworking or just plain told not to come to work, they will probably run washing machine or dishwasher in the middle of the day between conference calls. Thus water demand instead of peaking in the early morning and then again in the evening may average out across the day. Same for wastewater flow.
Electricity may be even more interesting. In the early morning and late evening, more electricity is used by people in their residences. In the middle of the day, more people are at businesses or schools, so they are using more of their electricity there. Similar for telecommunications. What about when everyone is staying home and teleworking? In theory, the offices should use less electricity assuming there are smart devices there to not turn on lights if no movement or the HVAC reacts to need in the offices. However, the homes are probably using more electricity. How will this affect the electricity grid? Electricity needs will be more spread out around residences and less in concentrated urban areas. The high speed internet at the office is probably not going to be used as much, but will the internet from residences be strained from all the traffic? My employer has been having remote access issues, which I have no doubt stem from the number of employees working from home. How will this affect the telecommunications grid? Cellphone traffic will possibly go up, and landline traffic may go down.
Conversely, will trash be generate less, the same, or more trash? Not going out would in theory generate less trash. However, we are probably going to go through more gloves, masks, and other personal protective equipment in the coming months, and not just from medical personnel. Take out from a restaurant generates more trash at least from the consumer than eating in, but as people avoid restaurants in general, no trash is being generated there.
I am not in any way shape or form arguing that the virus may be good or bad for the environment. People are dying. I am not losing sight of that. However, I think it is likely that the virus will affect the environment, and I am curious how. It seems likely that self quarantines or at least staying home as much as possible may last weeks if not months, so that may be an adequate amount of time for an affect of some sort to be seen. Question is, what will the affect be?