Analyzing the Impact of Covid-19 on Climatic Condition in Pakistan Using Geospatial Approach

Abstract

Coronavirus affected the usual trends of environmental factors, globally. This study is an attempt to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on climatic conditions in Pakistan using a geospatial approach. The secondary data is used in this study. For analysis of climatic conditions satellite data of selected climatic factors (wind speed and LST) was collected from openly available websites. The climatic data were downloaded from the MODIS MERRA-2 sensor from EOSDIS Worldview NASA in NC4 File format of wind speed and data of LST from USGS Earth Explorer. The data were processed by using geospatial approaches, such as interpolation (IDW), zonal statistics, and weighted sum. By doing statistical analysis the variations in climatic conditions are assessed. The findings revealed that during the lockdown period variations were observed in climatic conditions due to limitations on anthropogenic and industrial activities. During the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic not only the cases were under control but positive changes in climatic conditions were also observed. During the lockdown period of the pandemic, negative standardized anomalies in LST and wind speed were observed compared to prior years 2018 and 2019. Restriction on anthropogenic activities produces positive changes in environmental conditions.