COVID-19 mortality: positive correlation with cloudiness but no correlation with sunlight and latitude in Europe

We systematically investigated an ongoing debate about the possible correlation between SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) epidemiological outcomes and solar exposure in European countries, in the period of March – December 2020. For each country, we correlated its mortality data with: i) objective sky cloudiness (as cloud fraction) derived from satellite weather data, ii) solar insolation (watt/square metre at ground level), iii) latitude. We found a positive correlation between the monthly mortality rate and the overall cloudiness in that month (Pearson’s r(35)=.68, P<.001; averaged linear model fitting the data, adjusted R2 =0.45). In an additional month-by-month analysis, 17% to 59% of the variance in COVID-19 mortality/million appears to be predicted by the cloudiness fraction of the sky, except in the last two months of 2020. We did not find any statistical significant correlation with insolation, nor with latitude of the countries, when the “latitude of a country” was precisely defined as the average landmass location (country centroid). The unexpected correlation found between cloudiness and mortality could perhaps be explained by the following: 1) heavy cloudiness is linked with colder outdoor surfaces, which might aid virus survival; 2) reduced evaporation rate; 3) moderate pollution may be linked to both cloudiness and mortality; and 4) large-scale behavioural changes due to cloudiness (which perhaps drives people to spend more time indoors and thus facilitates indoor contamination).