NASA has lent its support to new projects to determine what, if any, natural environmental phenomena might impact the spread of COVID-19.
The projects will also examine how the shutdowns in response to the pandemic are changing the environment, especially the atmosphere, the US space agency said on Wednesday.
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In addition, scientists are using information from NASA's Earth-observing satellites, on-the-ground sensors and computer-based datasets to study the environmental and economic and societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"NASA has a unique role to play in response to this crisis," said John Haynes, NASA's program manager for Health and Air Quality Applications.
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"As we continue to collect Earth-observing satellite data on a global scale, we can aid in the understanding of global changes resulting from the pandemic, as well as investigate potential environmental signals that may influence the spread of COVID-19," Haynes said.
NASA recently funded two new rapid-turnaround projects focused on COVID-19 -- one is examining the pandemic's impact on air quality related to reduced airport traffic and the other is focused on creating maps and images that show how COVID-19 has reduced air pollution across the world.
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"The world's response to the pandemic is an unintended experiment that is giving us a chance to test our understanding of various air pollution emission sources," said Barry Lefer, NASA's program scientist for tropospheric composition.
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