Scientists have finally been able to pin a particular weather phenomenon to human activity. Temperatures are different on the weekends than during the week.
About 35 percent of locations experienced a significant weekend effect over 50 years of recordkeeping, the researchers found. In regions such as the Southwest, the Carolinas and Georgia, Sunday and Monday had a consistently larger daily temperature range than other days, with Fridays being the day with the smallest difference between high and low. In many communities the difference in range between weekend and weekdays was nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius).
But the weekend effect wasn’t always the same. Many localities in the Midwest had reverse effects, with smaller temperature ranges on the weekend than weekdays. In those regions, Tuesdays and Wednesdays typically had the biggest difference between the daily high and low.
In this map, red indicates the weekends have a higher minimum temp on the weekends; blue means it’s lower. The diameter is realted to the size of the effect, and the solid circles indicate a 95 percent significance.
Scientists don’t know why it’s happening (though there are speculations), nor why the phenomenon is reversed between, say, Billings than Baltimore. But it’s clearly human-related, since Nature really doesn’t distinguish between weekends.
Interesting stuff.