Pathogen seasonality and links with weather in England and Wales: a big data time series analysis

Cherrie, Mark P. C.; Nichols, Gordon; Iacono, Gianni Lo; Sarran, Christophe; Hajat, Shakoor; Fleming, Lora E.

A range of meteorological data for the UK was downloaded from the MEDMI Platform [15] at a 5 km by 5 km resolution for 2001-2011; full details on methods used to generate data are provided elsewhere [17] . The variables were monthly weather summaries that included: mean sunshine duration (hours per day), mean temperature (°C), mean daily maximum temperature (°C), mean daily minimum temperature (°C), mean vapour pressure (hPa), mean sea level (MSL) pressure (hPa), rain ≥1 mm (days), rain ≥10 mm (days), total rainfall (mm), mean wind speed at a height of 10 m (knots), mean relative humidity (%), snow lying over 50% of ground (days), ground frost measured as grass minimum temperature below 0°C (days), and air frost measured as air minimum temperature below 0°C (days) (Additional file 1: Figure S1 ). The data were imported into ArcMap 10 (ESRI, Redwoods, CA) and aggregated (arithmetic mean) for England and Wales, which enabled linkage with the infectious disease time series data.