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Based on the responses to the skills inventory filled out by the
students on the first day of class, working groups for the first project
will be assigned. Each group will have about 4 students. There
will be a brief time, just before the end of class, for the students in
the groups to get acquainted and share what each brings to the group in
way of (a) science background, (b) computer skills and (c) presentation
skills. This would be a good time to share e-mail addresses and scheduling
constraints for working together as a group.
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Most of the day's session will be devoted to a display of the resources
(i.e., climate data available on the web page for the first project. During
the last 15 minutes of the class the individual working groups will meet
to discuss whether they have any preferences for the region on which their
efforts will be focused. To the extent that it is possible the instructors
will try to assign the regions in accordance with the preferences indicated
by the groups. The actual assignments will be made during the following
(Friday, October 2) class period.
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The individual working groups will meet again for 10-15 minutes;
this time to brainstorm about possible ideas for the project. At
the end of the group meetings there will be a few minutes for the sharing
of ideas with the class. It is hoped that the groups that having
trouble defining the focus for their projects might get some ideas from
the other groups. Students are encouraged to continue over the course of
the next few days to define they are going to do.
This is the time to get in touch with a consultant to react to your ideas or to suggest ideas for your group to consider. The instructors would be willing to suggest which of the consultatnts would be best suited to your particular group assignment.
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As a basis for our demonstration project, we posed the following
question:
"How does the presence of nearby bodies of water serve to moderate summertime temperatures?"
After examining what was available on the web at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/climsum.html, we chose to look at four different statistics:
(1) mean daily maximum temperature (we hypothesized that stations with more marine climates would be cooler because of afternoon seabreezes)
(2) the difference between the mean daily maximum temperature and the mean daily minimum temperature (we hypothesized that stations with more marine climates would have smaller temperature ranges because the water would keep them warmer at night and cooler during the day)
(3) the highest temperature ever recorded at the station (we hypothesized that the the more marine the climate, the lower the all time maximum temperature)
(4) the difference between the mean temperatures of the warmest and coolest months on record (we hypothesized that stations with more marine climates would have less variability)
We chose to base this study on data for western Washington. Our
initial strategy was to examine just coastal stations and to compare stations
on the Pacific coast with those in the interior of Puget Sound. We were
interested in seeing whether the stations that were more directly exposed
to the waters of the Pacific showed more marine influence than stations
on
smaller bodies of water in the interior of Puget Sound. To make the
data extraction as simple as possible, we decided to consider temperature
data for the month of July only. Using Aberdeen as an example, we
obtained statistics on (1) and (2) from http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?waaber
and (3) and (4) by selecting the "Temperature" link from the "General Climate
Summary Tables" in the left panel. Here are the results for a selection
of stationsn starting with Sea-Tac Airport, proceeding northward through
Puget Sound, then westward along the southern shore of the Strait of Juan
de Fuca and then southward along the coast. All temperatures are
in degrees F. We chose the stations from looking at the locations of the
station numbers on the map.
mean daily max max minus min
highest ever (4)
Sea Tac Airport 75.1
20.6
100 8.8
Everett
72.8
19.3
93 8.8
Coupeville 71.2
21.1
95 9.1
Pt. Townsend 71.8
20.0
93 8.8
Pt. Angeles 68.2
17.1
94 11.9
Clallam Bay 62.6
14.5
100 9.3
Tatoosh
59.5
7.8
80 5.2
Quillayute 68.3
18.5
97 4.6
Clearwater 69.8
21.1
99 8.8
Pt. Grenville 62.6
12.5
85 5.4
Grayland
65.9
15.7
96 5.7
Long Beach 65.7
14.3
95 7.5
Of these statistics, the one that agrees best with our hypothesis is (1) mean daily maximum temperature, which is consistently cooler at stations on the Pacific coast than at stations in the interior of Puget Sound. Sea Tac airport, with a mean daily maximum of 75.1 F is comparable to stations in the Puget Sound lowlands regardless of how close they are to Puget Sound (e.g., to Snoqualmie Falls 75.5; Landsburg 75.5; Startup 76.5). The coolness of coastal stations varies: for example, Tatoosh and Pt. Grenville are cooler than Quillayute and Clearwater, which lie in between them. In contrast to the situation near Puget Sound, we noticed that the stations near or close to the Pacific coast have significantly cooler mean maximum temperatures than stations just a few miles inland. For example, on average Quillayute is 3.2 F cooler than Forks, 10 miles farther inland, and Pt Grenville is 9.5 F cooler than the town of Humpulips, located about 10 miles inland.
The stations with cool afternoons tend to have relatively small diurnal ranges (2), but Clearwater does not fit this pattern and Quillayute's value seems a little high as well. The same is true of the all time high temperatures. Tatoosh and Pt Grenville seem to be protected from extreme heat, but this is less true for Clearwater and Quillayute. We noticed that Forks and Humptulips and Lake Quinault, 10-30 miles inland from the coast have all experienced temperatures over 100 during July. Hence, prroximity to the coast does seem to afford some limited protection from extreme heat.
With a few notable exceptions, the difference between the mean temperatures of the warmest and coolest months on record (4) behaved as we had expected: July mean temperature is less variable at stations along the Pacific coast than inland or in the interior of Puget Sound. Clearwater doesn't fit this pattern, and it's not clear why Port Angeles has such a large value.
It occurred to us afterward that the numbers in the third and fourth column may be influenced by the period of record of the station. Stations with short records are not likely to experience as extreme a range of temperatures as stations with long records. In order to ensure a level playing field for these columns, strictly speaking, we should use only stations with the same record length.
In some respects, the statistics for Quillayute and Clearwater look more like those for stations inland from the coast than the ones for Tatoosh and Pt. Grenville. It occurred to us that maybe these stations aren't really on the coast. A quick look at a Washinton atlas confirmed our suspicions: Quillayute and Clearwater are both about 3 miles inland.
At this point we feel that we have put together enough information to provide the basis for an interesting and informative presentation, and are ready to think about how to present it. Showing the Table is not necessarily the best way to present our results: the students might be overwhelmed with so many numbers and they wouldn't have a clear idea of where the stations are located. It would be better to show maps with numerical values for each of our statistics. For this purpose it would be sufficient to copy the outline of Washington State onto a blank page and write the numbers in the appropriate places. A colored state map showing the mountains and bodies of water might make a good introductory figure. The easiest way to acquire one of those might be to copy it from the web. In addition, we would probably include an introductory overhead stating the hypothesis that we are going to test; another defining the statistics that we examined; and perhaps a third briefly summarizing our conclusions.
If we had the time, we would consider commissioning one of the members
of the group to take a weekend trip around the Olympic Peninsula to photograph
the sites of some of the key stations like Clearwater, Tatoosh and Pt.
Grenville and talk to local residents about the processes that keep the
coast so cool on summer afternoons: e.g., the seabreeze, fog, low clouds.
It would be interesting to compare the impressions of coastal residents
with those of residents who live in towns a few miles inland.
There would be many different ways in which individual members of our make believe group could build upon this group project for their individual papers. Here are some examples, starting with the most straightforward and working toward the more adventurous:
- examine analogous statistics for August and see if the same relationships hold up
- expand the domain of the analysis northward to include the San Juan Islands and the Bellingham area or southward toward Portland
- examine the statistics for more stations in the Puget Sound area
- examine similar statistics for a selection of Oregon and California coastal stations
- contrast statistics for the Puget Sound region with those for the Willamette Valley in Oregon, which has less marine influence
- investigate the role of the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound in moderating wintertime temperatures
- look up the weather page in archived issues of the Seattle Times or PI for the hottest dates on record and see what various stations experienced
- examine July temperature extremes at a subset of the stations with the common period of record (1948-98)
- compare more comprehensive July climate statistics for Sea-Tac airport and Quillayute available at <http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/summary/lcd.html>
- propose other statistics that might be affeced by proximity to the ocean and test whether they are
- interview one or two of the consultants about how to interpret some of the aspects of your results that you find particularly interesting and report what they say.
- try to find atlases or books that offer insights into the above statistics
or present complementary statistics
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This will be the final meeting of the working groups. By this
time, the projects should be fairly well defined, and students should be
focusing on who is going to do what and by when. The first group
presentation is only a week away and the first version of the web page
for all groups is less than two weeks away.
The order of the presentations will be assigned. Each working group will schedule a brief meeting with one of the instructors to give a brief status report on their project. These meetings should all take place by the end nof the week.
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