Sunday the day of rest for fires too!

Along with the rest of us, firefighters too may breathe a little easy on Sunday as a new study shows that of the more than a billion global fires that burned between 2001 and 2013, Sunday was the least active day with only 104 million fires.

That is nine million fewer fires, or eight percent less, than the number of fires on a Tuesday -- the middle of the working week, the researchers pointed out.

The findings suggest that fires around the world appear to be strongly influenced by the working week and particularly days of rest associated with religion.

"This study shows there is a very clear weekly pattern to fires around the world," said one of the researchers Nick Earl from University of Melbourne in Australia.

"Nature does not adhere to the weekly cycle, so this really highlights the influence we have on the planet when it comes to fires," Earl noted.

Studying weekly cycles -- a human concept -- in metereological variables is a common point of research, since it allows scientists to examine the level of human influence on nature.

While the weekly cycle was pronounced for Australia and the US, the weekend minimum rate of fires was not consistent across the world, the findings showed.

For instance, areas with higher Muslim populations, such as the Kazakhstan region had Thursday and Friday minimums.

The study appeared in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.