climographs - It`s All Geography!

CLIMOGRAPHS
You will be collecting climate data for your countries capital city. Climate is the long-term patterns of
temperature and precipitation based on the historical record for a certain place. Some people call
climate the average weather for a place, but it is a more statistical summation of all the past
occurrences of temperature and precipitation (both snow and rain*).
The climate record for a city is determined by looking at all the past years of weather data… all the
high and low temperatures for each day in each month, going back as long as the record exists! This
enables us to make a rather logical prediction about what someone might expect to experience in the
future for a place.
If the average of all the monthly temperatures for March for Boston were 38.5°F, then we could make
a pretty good guess that future March temperatures might average very close to this number. This
works the same for precipitation. If we look at all the rain and snow for the month of January for all the
years we have data, we find that we usually experience 3.36” of precipitation. This is a good indicator
of how much precipitation we should expect for every January in the future.
Of course weather and climate do not always agree! Mark Twain once said, “Climate is what you
expect, but weather is what you get!” This is because the many factors that influence the day to day
weather patterns can bring some odd occurrences! I have seen days in the winter reach 80°F while
some summers have seen snow in every month (1816!)
In order to complete this assignment you will need to gather some climate statistics from the internet
for your dataset. First, determine which city is your countries capital city – if you don’t already know!
Then simply do a Google search using the name of your city and climate statistics.
Example: Search on: Boston Massachusetts Climate Statistics
Often, Wikipedia can be an excellent source for your climate statistics. Here is the information for
Boston from Wikipedia (it is often found under the geography section, climate)
Note that this gives you a lot of information! More than you really need at this moment. You want to
find two pieces of data for each month, the Mean Monthly Temperature (MMT), which is the
average of the daily high and low temperatures and the Total Monthly Precipitation (TMP), which is
the total precipitation that has fallen during that month for each of your two cities. You will need to
collect your data in degrees Fahrenheit and in inches (so you might need the data in parenthesis if
you are working in a country that uses the metric system… hint: they all are!)
* When calculating the precipitation, we use the actual amount of rain, but for snow we use something
called the snow water equivalent, which takes the amount of snow that falls in a container and melts it
to discover the actual amount of water in that snow!
Is some cases you will need to calculate the monthly mean temperature from the monthly average
high and low temperatures. This is actually an easy task and it will not take you more than some
simple calculations to come up with the answer.
The Mean Monthly Temperature
Average High + Average Low
2
So for Boston, the average high for July is 79.6°F, and the average low is 64.6°F To determine the
mean monthly temperature we apply the formula:
MMT = 79.6°F + 64.6°F
2
=
=
144.2
2
=
72.1°F
You will need to collect or calculate these 12 data cells for MMT and TMP in order to construct a
graph to represent the year of climate data that you have collected.
We will construct a graph that has both the mean monthly temperature and total monthly precipitation
on a single graph. This is called a CLIMOGRAPH. A climograph is a graph except that shows the
long-term averages for mean monthly temperatures and total monthly precipitation – averages
spanning many years.
Climographs are wonderful tool for allowing us to visualize the entire annual pattern of temperature
and precipitation for a place. It is also a great tool to let us compare the climate patterns of two
different places.
Assignment:
You will be constructing a climograph from your climate data using the long-term climate data for
each city.
Later, after you have completed the climograph I would like you to compare the climograph of your
city to the climograph I have created of Boston, Massachusetts. How are they different? How are they
similar? Do the curves of temperature seem the same, reversed or just a totally different pattern?
Does the amount of precipitation seem similar? Boston has a fairly regular and consistent amount of
rainfall each month of the year… does this correlate to your city? Or is you city experiencing dry
seasons and wet seasons?
The comparison should discuss both the temperature and the precipitation. I do not expect you to
research WHY these two cities correlate or not, but I would like you to be observant of any
differences that you find in the data.
You will write a 2-paragraph comparison of Boston and your city. You need to include your completed
climograph for your city.
This assignment is due on Friday, March 14, 2014.
Climographs Explained:
Climographs represent two sets of meteorological data in one chart, Mean Monthly Temperature and
Total Monthly Precipitation.
The graph has two different Y-Axises, the precipitation on the left, and the temperature on the right.
The total monthly precipitation is shown as a bar chart, starting from the baseline (zero) and
extending up to the monthly total for each month. The mean temperature is plotted as a line chart.
The mean monthly temperature for each month is plotted as a large dot, and then lines are drawn
connecting them to create a smooth curve of mean temperatures.
Since we are using the same scales on all climographs, this makes it very easy to compare and
analyze the charts in both a numerical and a graphical manner.