Relative Humidity Predicts Day-to-Day Variations in COVID-19 Cases in the City of Buenos Aires.

Possible links between the transmission of COVID-19 and meteorology have been investigated by comparing positive cases across geographical regions or seasons. Little is known, however, about the degree to which environmental conditions modulate the daily dynamics of COVID-19 spread at a given location. One reason for this is that individual waves of the disease typically rise and decay too sharply, making it hard to isolate the contribution of meteorological cycles. To overcome this shortage, we here present a case study of the first wave of the outbreak in the city of Buenos Aires, which had a slow evolution of the caseload extending along most of 2020. We found that humidity plays a prominent role in modulating the variation of COVID-19 positive cases through a negative-slope linear relationship, with an optimal lag of 9 days between the meteorological observation and the positive case report. This relationship is specific to winter months, when relative humidity predicts up to half of the variance in positive case count. Our results provide a tool to anticipate possible local surges in COVID-19 cases after events of low humidity. More generally, they add to accumulating evidence pointing to dry air as a facilitator of COVID-19 transmission.

Spatial distribution of ground-level urban background O3 concentrations in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In this work, a recently developed urban-scale atmospheric dispersion model (DAUMOD-GRS) is applied to evaluate the ground-level ozone (O3) concentrations resulting from anthropogenic area sources of NOx and VOC in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (MABA). The statistical comparison of model results with observations (including new available data from seventeen sites) shows a good model performance. Estimated summer highest diurnal O3 1-h concentrations in the MABA vary between 15 ppb in the most urbanised area and 53 ppb in the suburbs. All values are below the air quality standard. Several runs are performed to evaluate the impact of possible future emission reductions on O3 concentrations. Under all hypothetical scenarios, the maximum diurnal O3 1-h concentration obtained for the area is slightly reduced (up to 4%). However, maximum diurnal O3 concentrations could increase at some less urbanised areas of MABA depending on the relative reductions of the emissions of NOx and VOC.