On Sunday, 22 March, India observed a ‘Janta Curfew’ to fight the novel coronavirus. Citizens across the country clapped and clanged plates to express gratitude to frontline health workers, who have been working tirelessly during the pandemic.
CLAIM
Now, Anurag Yadav, a member of the Samajwadi Party, shared a map claiming that it showed the sound waves in India recorded by NASA, on Sunday at 5:01 pm. While some states have been marked in red, others in yellow and green, showing the different intensities of the supposed sound waves.
Several social media users shared it on Twitter and Facebook with the same claim.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claim shared along with the image is false. Firstly, it’s not a map that shows sound waves, rather it’s a heatwave map of India. Secondly, the map is not from 22 March but dates back to June 2019.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We found that the same map was uploaded in an article published by a blog called ‘I F*****g Love Science’ with the headline ‘India's Epic Heatwave Has Just Set A Lethal Record’ and dates back to 11 June 2019.
The image carried in the article has credited the map to ‘Copernicus.eu.’
Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme that looks at the planet and its environment for the benefit of European citizens.
Consequently, we searched on Google with keywords ‘heatwave map India copernicus.eu’ and found a tweet shared by Copernicus EU on 4 June 2019. As per the tweet, the map shows the land surface temperature on 2 June and 4 June 2019.
It is noteworthy that the map, tweeted in 2019, which is actually a GIF, does not have any mention of ‘NASA Map of Sound waves’, like in the one that is viral on social media.
July 2019 was the hottest July in recorded history of India. As much as 65.12 percent of the population was exposed to a temperature of over 40 degree celsius between the months of May and June in 2019, an IndiaSpend report had then stated.
You can read all our coronavirus related fact-checked stories here.
(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer)
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