Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Apr 28;4(1):76.
doi: 10.1038/s41746-021-00435-2.

The effects of seasons and weather on sleep patterns measured through longitudinal multimodal sensing

Stephen M Mattingly  1 , Ted Grover  2 , Gonzalo J Martinez  3 , Talayeh Aledavood  4 , Pablo Robles-Granda  3 , Kari Nies  2 , Aaron Striegel  3 , Gloria Mark  2
Affiliations

The effects of seasons and weather on sleep patterns measured through longitudinal multimodal sensing

Stephen M Mattingly et al. NPJ Digit Med. .

Abstract

Previous studies of seasonal effects on sleep have yielded unclear results, likely due to methodological differences and limitations in data size and/or quality. We measured the sleep habits of 216 individuals across the U.S. over four seasons for slightly over a year using objective, continuous, and unobtrusive measures of sleep and local weather. In addition, we controlled for demographics and trait-like constructs previously identified to correlate with sleep behavior. We investigated seasonal and weather effects of sleep duration, bedtime, and wake time. We found several small but statistically significant effects of seasonal and weather effects on sleep patterns. We observe the strongest seasonal effects for wake time and sleep duration, especially during the spring season: wake times are earlier, and sleep duration decreases (compared to the reference season winter). Sleep duration also modestly decreases when day lengths get longer (between the winter and summer solstice). Bedtimes and wake times tend to be slightly later as outdoor temperature increases.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Geolocations of the participants in the study (N = 216).
This map was obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau that permits the free use of the map for publication (https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/2013-cartographic-boundary-file-state-for-united-states-1-20000000).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Sleep parameters per month over the study length.
Each point on the graph is produced by filtering all data points that exist for that month and computing the mean of the given sleep metric. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. a Average monthly adjusted sleep duration. b Average monthy adjusted bedtime. c Average monthly adjusted wake time.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Benham G. Sleep: an important factor in stress-health models. Stress Health. 2010;26:204–214. doi: 10.1002/smi.1304. - DOI
    1. Colten, H. R., Altevogt, B. M., Institute of Medicine (U.S.) & Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research. Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: an Unmet Public Health Problem (Institute of Medicine: National Academies Press, 2006). - PubMed
    1. Garbarino S, Lanteri P, Durando P, Magnavita N, Sannita W. Co-morbidity, mortality, quality of life and the healthcare/welfare/social costs of disordered sleep: a rapid review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2016;13:831. doi: 10.3390/ijerph13080831. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. McKnight-Eily LR, et al. Relationships between hours of sleep and health-risk behaviors in US adolescent students. Preventive Med. 2011;53:271–273. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2011.06.020. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baum KT, et al. Sleep restriction worsens mood and emotion regulation in adolescents. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry. 2014;55:180–190. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12125. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources