Remember, at the start of 2020, the whole world (or almost) was in lockdown. Objective: to slow the spread of Covid-19. And researchers from Physical Research Laboratory of Ahmedabad (India) argue today that while we were facing the pandemicpandemicsomething strange happened some 380,000 kilometers away. In the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Lettersthey say that on six observation sites on the visible side of the Moon, temperatures nocturnalnocturnal have declined considerably. Sometimes around ten degrees.
Falling temperatures on the Moon
To understand, let’s first remember that, during the day, the Moon, like the Earth, is flooded with light from the Sun. But at night, our satellite only receives the radiation sent back by our Planet. And in the past, scientists have already shown that on the Moon, nighttime temperatures are affected by the amount of radiation emitted by Earth.
Thus the researchers suggest that the drop in temperature observed on the Moon during the pandemic Covid-19Covid-19 is linked to thecollapsecollapse of human activity at the time of confinement. A collapse which has in fact seriously limited our greenhouse gas emissions and thus, also, the cloud cover and the pollutants present in our atmosphereatmosphere. As a result, the amount of radiation sent back into space by the Earth has decreased.
The Moon to judge the effects of our activities
Other studies will still have to confirm this. But according to researchers, the Moon thus behaves as an amplifier of the radiative signature of our Earth. And it could therefore in the future help us to observe the effects on our atmosphere and our climateclimate changes in human activities.
