Last Friday at Pachama, while doing our weekly meetings, Elias Ayrey, our Lead Scientist, showed us how global economic activity had drastically reduced in the last few weeks. Using Google Earth Engine, we were able to see how Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) concentration levels in China, Iran and Italy were being affected by coronavirus and quarantines.

That same weekend, remaining curious about these images, I logged back in and continued doing some queries. At some point, while doing a zoom out of the Earth, something struck me as an unlikely coincidence: China, Iran and Nothern Italy, which had had the worst outbreaks of coronavirus, had also the highest levels of NO2!

NO2 concentration levels for Jan 2020, before the outbreak. Notice how China, Iran and Italy have something in common other than leading the coronavirus death count.

Continuing my research, I learned that the three regions had promoted natural gas cars to reduce pollution and that NO2 produces negative effects on the respiratory system. Simple coincidence? After years of looking at numbers, I’ve rarely seen something with such a striking signal… at least it got me to consider NO2 as one of the most likely indicators of coronavirus’ death rate.

Following this line of reasoning, could LA be hit as hard as Northern Italy?

Following this line of reasoning, I looked at America and noticed that New York and LA, but specially LA, had high NO2 concentration levels. Does this mean that LA could have a similar “coronavirus outbreak” as Northern Italy? Does this mean we’ve already seen the worst of this virus and this is about to end? At the very least, I should share this theory with other people.

Obviously, it’s not that simple. Other factors, such as temperature and the effectiveness of a countries’ health system, among others, are in play. Am I missing something? While I don’t have the time and bandwidth to develop regression models for this, I hope someone can continue along this line of reasoning. Maybe we can save a life or two.