Exploring the Holiday Effect on Air Temperatures

Anthropogenic emissions are generally lower during holidays than they are on workdays, this pattern is expected to result in temperature variations. Variations in the daily maximum (T_max), mean (T_mean) and minimum (T_min) air temperatures and the diurnal temperature range (DTR) during the Chinese New Year holiday are evaluated with two methods using daily meteorological observations collected at 2200 stations in China from 1961 to 2015. These two methods yield nearly equivalent results that reflect strong variations in the defined holiday effects. During the period from 1961 to 1980, T_mean, T_max, T_min and the DTR all exhibit cooling holiday effects, this effect as measured by the DTR disappears during the period from 1981 to 2000. However, during the period from 2001 to 2015 warming holiday effects are observed for T_max and the DTR. The evaluation shows that the holiday effect is neither unique nor statistically significant. These results indicate that the holiday effect is primarily caused by natural atmospheric oscillations, because ΔT oscillates noticeably with periods of approximately 7.1 days, 8.5 days and 16.2 days, and these oscillations can account for approximately 75.6% of the variance in ΔT. The oscillation identified here is consistent with the fundamental theory of Rossby wave in the atmosphere.