Climate Research of Dubbo, Australia

Bobby Prier

Weather I Section 060

Dr. House

Sample S69

5/30/2012

Weather I Research Paper

The goal of this experiment was to collect precipitation and temperature data from a randomly selected region on the globe over the period of many years. With these data we can then analyze and interpret them to determine how the climate in a particular region changed over the decades. Sample S69 was data from Dubbo, a town in southeastern Australia just outside of Sydney. Observed were the average monthly temperatures and total precipitation levels for 150 years, spanning from 1872 to 1992. With these data we can determine how the climate of Dubbo, Australia changed each decade, and conclude how the average seasonal changes and annual variance in temperature and precipitation influenced this change.

To accomplish our goal, first the average annual temperature was calculated. Once the average temperature for each year has been found, the data are then sorted and fitted to a scatter plot comparing the average temperatures to the corresponding years. Then the line of best fit must be calculated. Once the equation of the line is known, the slope of the line is multiplied by 10 to achieve the average temperature increase or decrease per decade for the region. The process to attain the decadal change in precipitation is similar to the last method, except that the total annual precipitation is calculated, so the sum of the monthly precipitation levels must be found. Then the monthly levels of each must be separated into their seasonal groups: December to February as winter, March to May as spring, June to August as summer, and September to November as autumn. The same process that was used to find the annual data will be used on the corresponding seasonal data, thus revealing a better grasp of the climate change in the observed area.

For Dubbo, Australia, it was found that the average temperature decreased .016 degrees Celsius per decade and the total annual...