TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of climate indicators on the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia
AU - Abdel-Aal, Mohammad A.M.
AU - Eltoukhy, Abdelrahman E.E.
AU - Nabhan, Mohammad A.
AU - AlDurgam, Mohammad M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has left a major impact on daily lifestyle and human activities. Many recent studies confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic has human-to-human transmissibility. Additional studies claimed that other factors affect the viability, transmissibility, and propagation range of COVID-19. The effect of weather factors on the spread of COVID-19 has gained much attention among researchers. The current study investigates the relationship between climate indicators and daily detected COVID-19 cases in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the top five cities with confirmed cases. The examined climate indicators were temperature (°F), dew point (°F), humidity (%), wind speed (mph), and pressure (Hg). Using data from Spring 2020 and 2021, we conducted spatio-temporal correlation, regression, and time series analyses. The results provide preliminary evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic spread in most of the considered cities is significantly correlated with temperature (positive correlation) and pressure (negative correlation). The discrepancies in the results from different cites addressed in this study suggest that non-meteorological factors need to be explored in conjunction with weather attributes in a sufficiently long-term analysis to provide meaningful policy measures for the future.
AB - The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has left a major impact on daily lifestyle and human activities. Many recent studies confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic has human-to-human transmissibility. Additional studies claimed that other factors affect the viability, transmissibility, and propagation range of COVID-19. The effect of weather factors on the spread of COVID-19 has gained much attention among researchers. The current study investigates the relationship between climate indicators and daily detected COVID-19 cases in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the top five cities with confirmed cases. The examined climate indicators were temperature (°F), dew point (°F), humidity (%), wind speed (mph), and pressure (Hg). Using data from Spring 2020 and 2021, we conducted spatio-temporal correlation, regression, and time series analyses. The results provide preliminary evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic spread in most of the considered cities is significantly correlated with temperature (positive correlation) and pressure (negative correlation). The discrepancies in the results from different cites addressed in this study suggest that non-meteorological factors need to be explored in conjunction with weather attributes in a sufficiently long-term analysis to provide meaningful policy measures for the future.
KW - Climate indicators
KW - Coronavirus
KW - Correlation tests
KW - COVID-19
KW - Dew point
KW - Humidity
KW - Pressure
KW - Temperature
KW - Wind speed
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118565331&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11356-021-17305-9
DO - 10.1007/s11356-021-17305-9
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85118565331
SN - 0944-1344
VL - 29
SP - 20449
EP - 20462
JO - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
JF - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
IS - 14
ER -