The weekly weather cycles detected in some big cities have been linked to higher levels of vehicle exhaust and factory emissions on weekdays than at weekends. But researchers have now found that this effect acts over a much larger area than urban centres.
Arturo Sanchez-Lorenzo from the University of Barcelona and his colleagues examined 44 years of climate data from 13 weather stations across Spain. They discovered that winter weekends tend to be drier and sunnier than weekdays. The result held for both urban and rural areas, suggesting that the hebdomadal cycles are caused by pollution's effect on regional atmospheric circulation rather than dirty particles nucleating raindrops close to the source of smog.
The authors observed the same relationship across Western Europe, and the reverse — wetter weekends — in the eastern North Atlantic.
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Climatology: Winter sun. Nature 454, 806 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454806d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/454806d
