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Workweek Causes Climate Changes

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-take-the-week-off dept.

Shipud writes "An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that daily temperature ranges are smaller on weekdays than on weekends. This phenomenon is strongest in the US, but also appears in China and Japan. The researchers attribute this to human activity, although the exact mechanism is unclear. The prime suspect is aerosol / cloud interactions. Here is the more legible version from Scientific American"

2 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Sept. 11-13, 2001 Research Results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Due to the unprecedented halt of all non-military air travel over the United States during the above period, scientists were able to perform research on the effects of jet contrails. During their research, it was found that a single jet contrail could be tracked by satellite across the U.S., growing from a narrow plume of vapor to substantial cloud cover as it traveled the country. Such detailed observation was not possible before, due to the thousands of flights a day crossing the U.S. I believe the study you are referencing is linked to this one.

    The majority of flights across the U.S. are during the daytime hours on weekdays. Sounds like a high probability of a connection here, this deserves further investigation.

    M.O.
    http://www.madocowain.com
    http://www.play maille.com

  2. A Possibility I was partially responsible for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many of the weather stations that record the data that these people used are simple mercury or alcohol thermometers that get read by humans.

    I was one of these thermometer readers in grad school. During the work week, I was up for class or to go to the office, so I always read the thermometer at the same time, like I was supposed to. On weekends, it was hard to get the motivation to get out of bed early just to read a thermometer, so a lot of times I read it later than I was supposed to and guesstimated what the temp was a few hours earlier.

    I worried about the researchers using data from my weather station, but not enough to drag my butt out of bed any earlier.