Anthropogenic CO₂ emission reduction during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nanchang City, China

China is the largest CO₂ emitting country on Earth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, China implemented strict government control measures on both outdoor activity and industrial production. These control measures, therefore, were expected to significantly reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. However, large discrepancies still exist in the estimated anthropogenic CO₂ emission reduction rate caused by COVID-19 restrictions, with values ranging from 10% to 40% among different approaches. Here, we selected Nanchang city, located in eastern China, to examine the impact of COVID-19 on CO₂ emissions. Continuous atmospheric CO₂ and ground-level CO observations from January 1st to April 30th, 2019 to 2021 were used with the WRF-STILT atmospheric transport model and a priori emissions. And a multiplicative scaling factor and Bayesian inversion method were applied to constrain anthropogenic CO₂ emissions before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We found a 37.1–40.2% emission reduction when compared to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with the same period in 2019. Carbon dioxide emissions from the power industry and manufacturing industry decreased by 54.5% and 18.9% during the pandemic period. The power industry accounted for 73.9% of total CO₂ reductions during COVID-19. Further, emissions in 2021 were 14.3–14.9% larger than in 2019, indicating that economic activity quickly recovered to pre-pandemic conditions.