The researchers discovered that the moon’s surface may have been indirectly affected by the global lockdown. The team found that nighttime temperatures on the moon’s surface dropped significantly during the strict lockdown period due to the emerging coronavirus from April to May 2020.
They believe that this strange phenomenon can be explained by a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions during the lockdown, which ultimately led to the cooling of the moon’s surface.
“The Moon may have experienced the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown, which was visualized as an abnormal drop in nighttime lunar surface temperatures during that period,” the researchers stated in their report.
Two researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, analyzed nighttime lunar surface temperatures at six different locations on the near side of the moon — or the side that always faces Earth.
These temperature records were created by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) launched in 2009.
LRO is equipped with an instrument that uses seven infrared thermal cameras to measure the temperature of the moon’s surface.
The team looked at temperatures recorded from 2017 to 2023, and discovered something strange in the data taken between April and May 2020.
At all six sites, researchers found an abnormal temperature drop of eight to ten degrees Kelvin (or roughly 14 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) that appears to correspond with this lockdown period.
The lowest temperatures ever recorded have been recorded in one of two locations on Oceanus Procellarum – a large, dark plain on the near side of the Moon.
There, temperatures dropped to 96.2 Kelvin, or -286 Fahrenheit. For comparison, temperatures at this location rose to 131.7 K, or -222 F, in 2022.
The average temperature of the Moon at the equator and mid-latitudes ranges from -298 F during lunar night to 224 F during lunar day.
The researchers hypothesize that this slowdown was due to a sudden drop in radiation emanating from the Earth as human activity ceased during the lockdown, which in turn reduced the amount of heat escaping from the atmosphere.
They published their results this month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
The first wave of COVID-19 swept the world in March 2020. At this time, vaccines were not yet available.
Therefore, governments around the world have issued strict lockdown protocols in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. By April, almost half of the world’s population was told to stay home.
This has significantly reduced the amount of terrestrial radiation generated on Earth. This is because the lockdown caused many activities that generate global warming gases such as mobility, manufacturing and mining to stop.
In fact, research has shown that daily global carbon dioxide emissions fell by about 17 percent by early April 2020 compared to average 2019 levels.
When sunlight reaches Earth, some of this radiation is absorbed by our planet’s surface and atmosphere. This causes the Earth’s temperature to rise, thus generating ground-based infrared radiation – or radiant heat.
When there are high concentrations of global greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane, these gases absorb Earth’s geothermal heat and then re-emit it into space.
But during the lockdown, the global decline in emissions has led to a decline in cloud cover and atmospheric pollutants in many countries. The researchers explained in their report that the amount of heat emanating from the Earth also decreased.
The drop in temperatures observed by researchers on the near side of the Moon – or the side that always faces the Earth – indicates that some of the heat emanating from our planet affects the surface of the Moon and warms it.
This would explain why the Moon’s surface temperature drops during a period of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
In their report, the researchers indicated the need for further research to prove the existence of conclusive links between the two phenomena. But this study points to lunar surface temperatures as a new way to study the effects of climate change on Earth.
Source: Daily Mail
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2024-10-03 19:55:46
