Influence of human population movements on urban climate of Beijing during the Chinese New Year holiday

The population movements for the Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations, known as the world’s largest yearly migration of human beings, have grown rapidly in the past several decades. The massive population outflows from urban areas largely reduce anthropogenic heat release and modify some other processes, and may thus have noticeable impacts on urban climate of large cities in China. Here, we use Beijing as an example to present observational evidence for such impacts over the period of 1990–2014. Our results show a significant cooling trend of up to 0.55 °C per decade, particularly at the nighttime during the CNY holiday relative to the background period. The average nighttime cooling effect during 2005–2014 reaches 0.94 °C relative to the 1990s, significant at the 99% confidence level. The further analysis supports that the cooling during the CNY holiday is attributable primarily to the population outflow of Beijing. These findings illustrate the importance of population movements in influencing urban climate despite certain limitations. As the world is becoming more mobile and increasingly urban, more efforts are called for to understand the role of human mobility at various spatial and temporal scales.