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ABSTRACT

The pandemic started in March 2020 in the United States of America with a standard deviation of about a month as further investigations are still looking into the exact date the spread at ground zero in Wuhan started. Regardless of its exact date, the goal of this study is not to pinpoint when it actually started, but to rather understand the effects the pandemic had (if any) on the general heat changes over the span of the two year period in the Houston area to see if there were actually any changes as a direct result of the pandemic. Looking at the general data to be considered a normal heat feature of the Houston area for the pre-pandemic portion, it served as a buffer from the year 2019 to see if the deviations during the pandemic are normal.

Taking into account the kind of heat absorbers from the iron buildings to the cemented areas, glass areas, vegetation, soil, water, and electrical appliances as well as human movement around Houston. Using thermal ASTER and MODIS datasets, as tools in the ENVI software, this analysis was made easier.  The process involved the use of geometric corrections, radiometric calibration, Mask nan Pixels, Atmospheric corrections, applying the mask again, before achieving the emissivity and Temperature calculated datasets that generated the images. Technically the pandemic is still ongoing, but there is enough data in the Houston area to proceed with the analysis for the post-pandemic portion since quarantine in the Houston area was shut off and movement resumed sometime in July 2021 for most of the areas in Houston. The limitations of the analysis may be tied to the depth of accuracy with regards to the actual source of the heat, but the pre-pandemic analysis should account for that. 

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