Weekend effect: Anthropogenic or natural?

[1] Human activities have been suggested to result in weekly changes of meteorological variables, called the “weekend effect.” Recent debates on its statistical significance, however, reveal that there still remain huge uncertainties as to the anthropogenic origin of the weekend effect. We show that atmospheric Rossby waves induce the “natural” weekend effect, which is much stronger than the “anthropogenic” weekend effect. The “natural” weekend effect does not completely disappear even with averaging over 61 years of data; as a result, true “anthropogenic” weekend effect is obscured by the natural component. We attempted to remove the “natural” component in the diurnal temperature range and the resulting pattern is an overall positive weekend effect over North America.

[1]  R. Balling,et al.  Weekly cycles of air pollutants, precipitation and tropical cyclones in the coastal NW Atlantic region , 1998, Nature.

[2]  R. Reynolds,et al.  The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project , 1996, Renewable Energy.

[3]  Michael B. Richman,et al.  Weekly precipitation cycles? Lack of evidence from United States surface stations , 2007 .

[4]  J. Martín-Vide,et al.  Winter “weekend effect” in southern Europe and its connections with periodicities in atmospheric dynamics , 2008 .

[5]  An unexpected pattern of distinct weekly periodicities in climatological variables in Germany , 2007 .

[6]  J. Martín-Vide,et al.  Reply to comment by H. J. Hendricks Franssen et al. on “Winter ‘weekend effect’ in southern Europe and its connections with periodicities in atmospheric dynamics” , 2009 .

[7]  Susan Solomon,et al.  Observations of a “weekend effect” in diurnal temperature range , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  Kwang-Yul Kim,et al.  Propagation and initiation mechanisms of the Madden-Julian oscillation , 2003 .

[9]  J. Holton.  An introduction to dynamic meteorology , 2004 .

[10]  Does a weekend effect in diurnal temperature range exist in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau , 2009 .

[11]  Kerry Gallagher,et al.  Reply to comment regarding the ICE-hypothesis , 2009 .

[12]  T. Bell,et al.  Midweek increase in U.S. summer rain and storm heights suggests air pollution invigorates rainstorms , 2008 .

[13]  Reply to comment by H. J. Hendricks Franssen on “An unexpected pattern of distinct weekly periodicities in climatological variables in Germany” , 2008 .

[14]  Comment on “An unexpected pattern of distinct weekly periodicities in climatological variables in Germany” by Dominique Bäumer and Bernhard Vogel , 2008 .

[15]  Rosenfeld,et al.  Suppression of rain and snow by urban and industrial air pollution , 2000, Science.

[16]  T E Graedel,et al.  Sunday and Workday Variations in Photochemical Air Pollutants in New Jersey and New York , 1974, Science.

[17]  D. Easterling.  United States Historical Climatology Network Daily Temperature and Precipitation Data (1871-1997) , 2002 .

[18]  U. Lohmann,et al.  Weekly cycle in particulate matter versus weekly cycle in precipitation over Switzerland , 2009 .

[19]  Chang‐Hoi Ho,et al.  Weekly cycle of aerosol-meteorology interaction over China , 2007 .

[20]  Chang‐Hoi Ho,et al.  Long‐term changes in summer weekend effect over northeastern China and the connection with regional warming , 2009 .

[21]  Weekly cycle in NCAR-NCEP reanalysis surface temperature data , 2005 .

[22]  G. Guo,et al.  Reply to the comment , 1997, quant-ph/9710014.

[23]  B. Hoskins,et al.  On the use and significance of isentropic potential vorticity maps , 2007 .

[24]  Comment on “Weekly precipitation cycles? Lack of evidence from United States surface stations” by D. M. Schultz et al. , 2008 .

[25]  F. Fujibe.  Day-of-the-week variations of urban temperature and their long-term trends in Japan , 2010 .

[26]  U. Lohmann,et al.  Comment on “Winter ‘weekend effect’ in southern Europe and its connection with periodicities in atmospheric dynamics” by A. Sanchez‐Lorenzo et al. , 2009 .

[27]  kwang-yul kim,et al.  EOFs of Harmonizable Cyclostationary Processes , 1997 .

[28]  Chang‐Hoi Ho,et al.  Weekend effect in diurnal temperature range in China: Opposite signals between winter and summer , 2006 .

[29]  kwang-yul kim,et al.  EOFs of One-Dimensional Cyclostationary Time Series: Computations, Examples, and Stochastic Modeling , 1996 .

[30]  A. H. Gordon.  Weekdays warmer than weekends? , 1994, Nature.