Lesson Plans: Current Weather
Objective
The objective of this activity is to understand the difference between weather and climate and changes that take place in a given environment.
Materials
Each student or group of students will need the following:
- Local weather information from newspapers
- Printed charts for the temperatures
- Colored pencils
Important Points to Understand
Weather: Current atmospheric conditions including temperature, rainfall, wind, and humidity (e.g., what's going on outside now, what's likely to happen tomorrow).
Climate: General weather conditions expected in a given area, usually based on the 30-year average weather. May also be applied more generally to large-scale weather patterns in time or space (e.g., an Ice Age climate, or a tropical climate).
Preparation
You will need to locate daily weather data from several local newspapers and record your findings in graph form. Daily weather data often Include high and low temperatures, record high and low temperatures, and normal high and low temperatures. Using weather data collected from the local newspapers, graph data and compare daily weather information with longer term climate, trends.
To separate daily weather from climate the National Weather Service uses values from the past thirty years to compile average weather. In the study of Global Climate Change, scientists use even longer time periods, preferring to go back as far as the historical record will go, as long as it is thought to be accurate.
Procedure
- Prepare graphs to record data (the detail of the graph will depend on the duration of your weather data collection and which data you choose to include).
- Collect data (do not forget weekends) by clipping weather data from the newspapers. Record this information in a notebook.
- Either daily or weekly, record each day's weather data on the graph.
- Using your graphs, compare daily weather with normal or average condition. Then answer the following questions in your notebook and prepare to discuss the answers in class with the values you have recorded.
- Among the various items which you have plotted, which shows the most variability, the daily values or average values? Why?
- If you were asked to predict the weather for tomorrow from the data shown on the graph, what data would you find the most useful, the daily or average values?
- Would the answer change if you were asked to predict the weather one month ahead?
- Try to access an annual temperature records for a high latitude city like, New York, perhaps from the local Pacific Island Meteorological Office and compare the temperature range with that of your own country.
