Weather does not influence Coronavirus infections, meteoblue study finds

The meteoblue team selected 21 countries from 5 continents and all global climate zones, with a total of 103'814 cases of diagnosed Coronavirus (COVID-19) detection (infections), and analysed the correlation of new infections with 6 major weather variables (air temperature , relative humidity, radiation, wind speed, sunshine hours and precipitation) during the period from 1 January to 18 March 2020, using meteoblue’s hourly history+ data, which can be readily downloaded for any place on Earth.

The study produced no visible correlations for any of the variables, neither in 21 countries from 5 continents and all global climate zones, nor within the 7 countries with most detections in March (China, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Iran).

Although this study is preliminary, some important conclusions seem possible:

• Higher air temperatures are unlikely to slow the spread of the virus significantly.
• The COVID-19 infections seem to be largely independent of external weather influence.
• Further analysis should focus on the effect of temperature, relative humidity and radiation, by reducing masking factors such as behaviours changes (public restrictions, hygiene measures, others), location differences and reporting imprecision.

As a general summary, the meteoblue team concludes that containment of COVID-19 infections cannot rely on weather as a significant factor in helping reduce the spread of the disease. The detailed study is available for download here.

Meteoblue will continue investigations into more detailed relations, and appreciates any contributions and suggestions.

Meteoblue delivers local weather information of high quality worldwide for any point on land or sea in the world. The company uses cutting edge science and technology to generate, display and distribute weather information. The forecasts were initially developed at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Meteoblue was founded as a company in 2006, to ensure reliable operational forecasts and to better service the industry; an independent commercial computing infrastructure and product development was established. Since early 2007, the meteoblue computer cluster is daily-computing high-resolution forecasts.