Abstract
Human behaviors probably represent the most important causes of the SARS-Cov-2 virus propagation. However, the role of virus transport by aerosols—and therefore the influence of atmospheric conditions (temperature, humidity, type and concentration of aerosols)—on the spread of the epidemic remains an open and still debated question. This work aims to study whether or not the meteorological conditions related to the different aerosol properties in continental and coastal urbanized areas might influence the atmospheric transport of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Our analysis focuses on the lockdown period to reduce the differences in the social behavior and highlight those of the weather conditions. As an example, we investigated the contamination cases during March 2020 in two specific French areas located in both continental and coastal areas with regard to the meteorological conditions and the corresponding aerosol properties, the optical depth (AOD) and the Angstrom exponent provided by the AERONET network. The results show that the analysis of aerosol ground-based data can be of interest to assess a virus survey. We found that moderate to strong onshore winds occurring in coastal regions and inducing humid environment and large sea-spray production episodes coincides with smaller COVID-19 contamination rates. We assume that the coagulation of SARS-Cov-2 viral particles with hygroscopic salty sea-spray aerosols might tend to inhibit its viral infectivity via possible reaction with NaCl, especially in high relative humidity environments typical of maritime sites.
Highlights
The COVID-19 escalation, which started at the beginning of 2020 due to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, is causing serious consequences in our society in terms of health with hundred thousands of deaths and in terms of economy because of the confinement decision that nearly stopped the industrial and commercial activities of a large number of countries
We investigated the contamination cases during March 2020 in two specific French areas located in both continental and coastal areas with regard to the meteorological conditions and the corresponding aerosol properties, the optical depth (AOD) and the Angstrom exponent provided by the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) network
We found that moderate to strong onshore winds occurring in coastal regions and inducing humid environment and large sea-spray production episodes coincides with smaller COVID-19 contamination rates
Summary
The COVID-19 escalation, which started at the beginning of 2020 due to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, is causing serious consequences in our society in terms of health with hundred thousands of deaths and in terms of economy because of the confinement decision that nearly stopped the industrial and commercial activities of a large number of countries. Since 2003, when the SARS-CoV was identified, very few studies and routine monitoring dealt with the role of coronaviruses in humans [1]. In anticipation of another crisis in the future, we need to improve our knowledge of the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 and of potentially similar viruses, to help our governments to develop strategies avoiding as much possible stopping human activities. Human behaviors probably represent the most important causes of the virus propagation [2,3] the influence of atmospheric environmental parameters need to be investigated as well in view of this containing strategy development [4,5]. The influence of the outdoor environmental parameters—like solar radiation, [15] temperature, humidity, wind characteristics, pollution and aerosols load, etc.—needs to be investigated as well [4,9]
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