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AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on global health, with millions of people affected by the disease. Recent studies have shown that environmental factors such as air quality, temperature, and humidity can impact the survival and transmission of the virus, leading to differences in the rate of spread and severity of the disease in different regions. In this global cross-sectional study, we analyzed the relationship between environmental factors and the transmission and survival of the virus in 167 cities distributed all over the world. We used a dataset containing daily COVID-19 data for 167 cities from 01/05/2020 to 01/01/2022, along with variables related to atmospheric and environmental conditions. We found an expected positive relationship between increases in atmospheric NO2 concentration and increases in the infective rate of COVID-19. We also found an unexpected negative relationship between PM10 and COVID-19 spread, which was stronger in unpolluted cities, and indicating a likely stronger and faster deactivation of the viruses by the absorption to the larger than to the smaller particles, to PM10 more than to PM2.5. Although a complete analysis would require taking into account the restrictions in the city and the immunization status of the population, and the variance of COVID-19 spread explained by PM10 was small, only up to approx. 2%, these results contribute to a better understanding of the impact of particles on the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory viral diseases thus informing public health policies and interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of these pandemics.

This article is part of the FORHOT project ; Increasing temperatures can accelerate soil organic matter decomposition and release large amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, potentially inducing positive warming feedbacks. Alterations to the temperature sensitivity and physiological functioning of soil microorganisms may play a key role in these carbon (C) losses. Geothermally active areas in Iceland provide stable and continuous soil temperature gradients to test this hypothesis, encompassing the full range of warming scenarios projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the northern region. We took soils from these geothermal sites 7 years after the onset of warming and incubated them at varying temperatures and substrate availability conditions to detect persistent alterations of microbial physiology to long-term warming. Seven years of continuous warming ranging from 1.8 to 15.9 °C triggered a 8.6–58.0% decrease on the C concentrations in the topsoil (0–10 cm) of these sub-arctic silt-loam Andosols. The sensitivity of microbial respiration to temperature (Q10) was not altered. However, soil microbes showed a persistent increase in their microbial metabolic quotients (microbial respiration per unit of microbial biomass) and a subsequent diminished C retention in biomass. After an initial depletion of labile soil C upon soil warming, increasing energy costs of metabolic maintenance and resource acquisition led to a weaker capacity of C stabilization in the microbial biomass of warmer soils. This mechanism contributes to our understanding of the acclimated response of soil respiration to in situ soil warming at the ecosystem level, despite a lack of acclimation at the physiological level. Persistent increases in the respiratory costs of soil microbes in response to warming constitute a fundamental process that should be incorporated into climate change-C cycling models. ; This research was supported by the European Union's Seventh Framework Program, the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Science and Employment of the Junta de Andalucía (postdoctoral fellowship of the Andalucía Talent Hub Program, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, COFUND—Grant Agreement No 291780, to SMJ), the European Research Council Synergy grant 610028 (IMBALANCE-P), the research project "GEISpain" (CGL2014-52838-C2-1-R) of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Research Council of the University of Antwerp (FORHOT TOP-BOF project). This work contributes to the FSC-Sink, CAR-ES and ClimMani COST Action (ES1308). The Agricultural University of Iceland and Mogilsá—the Icelandic Forest Research, provided logistical support for the present study. We thank Matthias Meys, Sara Diels, Johan De Gruyter, Giovanni Dalmasso, Fabiana Quirós and Nadine Calluy for their invaluable help in the laboratory and Sara Vicca and James Weedon for their constructive suggestions. We further thank Anne Cools and Tom Van Der Spiet for their assistance with the lab chemical analyses. ; Peer Reviewed

Climate change is stronger at high than at temperate and tropical latitudes. The natural geothermal conditions in southern Iceland provide an opportunity to study the impact of warming on plants, because of the geothermal bedrock channels that induce stable gradients of soil temperature. We studied two valleys, one where such gradients have been present for centuries (long-term treatment), and another where new gradients were created in 2008 after a shallow crustal earthquake (short-term treatment). We studied the impact of soil warming (0 to +15 C) on the foliar metabolomes of two common plant species of high northern latitudes: Agrostis capillaris, a monocotyledon grass; and Ranunculus acris, a dicotyledonous herb, and evaluated the dependence of shifts in their metabolomes on the length of the warming treatment. The two species responded differently to warming, depending on the length of exposure. The grass metabolome clearly shifted at the site of long-term warming, but the herb metabolome did not. The main up-regulated compounds at the highest temperatures at the long-term site were saccharides and amino acids, both involved in heat-shock metabolic pathways. Moreover, some secondary metabolites, such as phenolic acids and terpenes, associated with a wide array of stresses, were also up-regulated. Most current climatic models predict an increase in annual average temperature between 2–8 C over land masses in the Arctic towards the end of this century. The metabolomes of A. capillaris and R. acris shifted abruptly and nonlinearly to soil warming >5 C above the control temperature for the coming decades. These results thus suggest that a slight warming increase may not imply substantial changes in plant function, but if the temperature rises more than 5 C, warming may end up triggering metabolic pathways associated with heat stress in some plant species currently dominant in this region. ; This research was supported by the European Research Council Synergy grant ERC-2013-SyG-610028 IMBALANCE-P, the Spanish Government grant CGL2016-79835, the Catalan Government grant SGR 2014-274, the Scholarly Studies programme of the Smithsonian Institution, projects LM2015061 and LO1415 of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, and the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO aspirant grant to N.L.). ; Peer Reviewed

International audience ; Natural gas use accounts for ≈38% of the fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in Europe, including the EU27 and UK (Eurostat, 2021). The share of this fossil fuel in the energy mix has been growing since 1990 at the expense of oil and coal, as it is viewed as a cleaner source of energy (IEA, 2021). The main sectors using natural gas are the built environment (residential, public and commercial buildings), the industry, and the electricity production (Eurostat, 2021). In addition to steadily growing natural gas use, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted economic activities and the energy demand, beginning in early March of 2020. Specifically, the government policies restricted mobility and confined people at home during "lockdowns", and reduced or closed industrial and non-essential commercial activities, with impacts on gas use and pertaining CO 2 emissions. Although such impacts have been noted by recent reports (IEA, 2020a, 2020b), they have not yet been quantified and analyzed in detail. During the cold season period when the pandemic arrived in Europe, natural gas consumption is typically high due to the heating demand in the built environment, which represents 52% of the total gas consumption from all-sectors averaged over January to June. For both residential and commercial buildings, gas consumption is typically inversely proportional to daily air temperature when temperatures fall below a comfort threshold "critical

International audience ; Natural gas use accounts for ≈38% of the fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in Europe, including the EU27 and UK (Eurostat, 2021). The share of this fossil fuel in the energy mix has been growing since 1990 at the expense of oil and coal, as it is viewed as a cleaner source of energy (IEA, 2021). The main sectors using natural gas are the built environment (residential, public and commercial buildings), the industry, and the electricity production (Eurostat, 2021). In addition to steadily growing natural gas use, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted economic activities and the energy demand, beginning in early March of 2020. Specifically, the government policies restricted mobility and confined people at home during "lockdowns", and reduced or closed industrial and non-essential commercial activities, with impacts on gas use and pertaining CO 2 emissions. Although such impacts have been noted by recent reports (IEA, 2020a, 2020b), they have not yet been quantified and analyzed in detail. During the cold season period when the pandemic arrived in Europe, natural gas consumption is typically high due to the heating demand in the built environment, which represents 52% of the total gas consumption from all-sectors averaged over January to June. For both residential and commercial buildings, gas consumption is typically inversely proportional to daily air temperature when temperatures fall below a comfort threshold "critical

International audience ; Natural gas use accounts for ≈38% of the fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in Europe, including the EU27 and UK (Eurostat, 2021). The share of this fossil fuel in the energy mix has been growing since 1990 at the expense of oil and coal, as it is viewed as a cleaner source of energy (IEA, 2021). The main sectors using natural gas are the built environment (residential, public and commercial buildings), the industry, and the electricity production (Eurostat, 2021). In addition to steadily growing natural gas use, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted economic activities and the energy demand, beginning in early March of 2020. Specifically, the government policies restricted mobility and confined people at home during "lockdowns", and reduced or closed industrial and non-essential commercial activities, with impacts on gas use and pertaining CO 2 emissions. Although such impacts have been noted by recent reports (IEA, 2020a, 2020b), they have not yet been quantified and analyzed in detail. During the cold season period when the pandemic arrived in Europe, natural gas consumption is typically high due to the heating demand in the built environment, which represents 52% of the total gas consumption from all-sectors averaged over January to June. For both residential and commercial buildings, gas consumption is typically inversely proportional to daily air temperature when temperatures fall below a comfort threshold "critical

International audience ; Natural gas use accounts for ≈38% of the fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in Europe, including the EU27 and UK (Eurostat, 2021). The share of this fossil fuel in the energy mix has been growing since 1990 at the expense of oil and coal, as it is viewed as a cleaner source of energy (IEA, 2021). The main sectors using natural gas are the built environment (residential, public and commercial buildings), the industry, and the electricity production (Eurostat, 2021). In addition to steadily growing natural gas use, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted economic activities and the energy demand, beginning in early March of 2020. Specifically, the government policies restricted mobility and confined people at home during "lockdowns", and reduced or closed industrial and non-essential commercial activities, with impacts on gas use and pertaining CO 2 emissions. Although such impacts have been noted by recent reports (IEA, 2020a, 2020b), they have not yet been quantified and analyzed in detail. During the cold season period when the pandemic arrived in Europe, natural gas consumption is typically high due to the heating demand in the built environment, which represents 52% of the total gas consumption from all-sectors averaged over January to June. For both residential and commercial buildings, gas consumption is typically inversely proportional to daily air temperature when temperatures fall below a comfort threshold "critical

International audience ; Natural gas use accounts for ≈38% of the fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in Europe, including the EU27 and UK (Eurostat, 2021). The share of this fossil fuel in the energy mix has been growing since 1990 at the expense of oil and coal, as it is viewed as a cleaner source of energy (IEA, 2021). The main sectors using natural gas are the built environment (residential, public and commercial buildings), the industry, and the electricity production (Eurostat, 2021). In addition to steadily growing natural gas use, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted economic activities and the energy demand, beginning in early March of 2020. Specifically, the government policies restricted mobility and confined people at home during "lockdowns", and reduced or closed industrial and non-essential commercial activities, with impacts on gas use and pertaining CO 2 emissions. Although such impacts have been noted by recent reports (IEA, 2020a, 2020b), they have not yet been quantified and analyzed in detail. During the cold season period when the pandemic arrived in Europe, natural gas consumption is typically high due to the heating demand in the built environment, which represents 52% of the total gas consumption from all-sectors averaged over January to June. For both residential and commercial buildings, gas consumption is typically inversely proportional to daily air temperature when temperatures fall below a comfort threshold "critical

International audience ; As the COVID-19 virus spread over the world, governments restricted mobility to slow transmission. Public health measures had different intensities across European countries but all had significant impact on people's daily lives and economic activities, causing a drop of CO2 emissions of about 10% for the whole year 2020. Here, we analyze changes in natural gas use in the industry and gas distribution to the built environment during the first half of year 2020 with daily gas flows data from pipeline and storage facilities in Europe. We find that reductions of industrial gas use reflect decreases in industrial production across most countries. Surprisingly, natural gas use in the built environment also decreased despite most people being confined at home and cold spells in March 2020. Those reductions that we attribute to the impacts of COVID-19 remain of comparable magnitude to previous variations induced by cold or warm climate anomalies in the cold season. We conclude that climate variations played a larger role than COVID-19 induced stay-home orders in natural gas consumption across Europe.

International audience ; As the COVID-19 virus spread over the world, governments restricted mobility to slow transmission. Public health measures had different intensities across European countries but all had significant impact on people's daily lives and economic activities, causing a drop of CO2 emissions of about 10% for the whole year 2020. Here, we analyze changes in natural gas use in the industry and gas distribution to the built environment during the first half of year 2020 with daily gas flows data from pipeline and storage facilities in Europe. We find that reductions of industrial gas use reflect decreases in industrial production across most countries. Surprisingly, natural gas use in the built environment also decreased despite most people being confined at home and cold spells in March 2020. Those reductions that we attribute to the impacts of COVID-19 remain of comparable magnitude to previous variations induced by cold or warm climate anomalies in the cold season. We conclude that climate variations played a larger role than COVID-19 induced stay-home orders in natural gas consumption across Europe.