Indirect Response of the Temperature, Humidity, and Rainfall on the Spread of COVID-19 over the Indian Monsoon Region

Sanjay Kumar Mehta; Aravindhavel Ananthavel; T V Ramesh Reddy; Saleem Ali; Shyam Bihari Mehta; Sachin Philip Kakkanattu; Pooja Purushotham; K B Betsy

doi:10.1007/s00024-022-03205-7

Indirect Response of the Temperature, Humidity, and Rainfall on the Spread of COVID-19 over the Indian Monsoon Region

Pure Appl Geophys. 2023;180(1):383-404. doi: 10.1007/s00024-022-03205-7. Epub 2022 Dec 26.

Authors

Sanjay Kumar Mehta¹, Aravindhavel Ananthavel^{1

2}, T V Ramesh Reddy^{1

3}, Saleem Ali^{1

4}, Shyam Bihari Mehta⁵, Sachin Philip Kakkanattu¹, Pooja Purushotham¹, K B Betsy¹

Affiliations

¹ Atmospheric Observations and Modelling Laboratory (AOML), Department of Physics, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, 603203 Tamil Nadu India.
² Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India.
³ Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India.
⁴ Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai, India.
⁵ Centre for Astroparticle Physics and Space Science, Bose Institute, Kolkata, 700091 India.

Abstract

This article examines the role of the meteorological variable in the spread of the ongoing pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) across India. COVID-19 has created an unprecedented situation for public health and brought the world to a standstill. COVID-19 had caused more than 1,523,242 deaths out of 66,183,029 confirmed cases worldwide till the first week of December 2020. We have examined the surface temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall over five cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai, which were severely affected by COVID-19. It is found that the prevailing southwest (SW) monsoon during the pandemic has acted as a natural sanitizer in limiting the spread of the virus. The mean rainfall is ~ 20-40 mm over the selected cities, resulting in an average decrease in COVID cases by ~ 18-26% for the next 3 days after the rainfall. The day-to-day variations of the meteorological parameters and COVID-19 cases clearly demonstrate that both surface temperature and relative humidity play a vital role in the indirect transport of the virus. Our analysis reveals that most COVID-19 cases fall within the surface temperature range from 24 to 30 °C and relative humidity range from 50% to 80%. At a given temperature, COVID-19 cases show a large dependency on the relative humidity; therefore, the coastal environments were more prone to infections. Wavelet transforms coherence analysis of the daily COVID-19 cases with temperature and relative humidity reveals a significant coherence within 8 days.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Health; India; Rainfall; Relative Humidity; Temperature.

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