Learning about the El Nino with 3rd and 4th grade students

Dorian Janney, GLOBE Scientist Mentor Blog for El Nino Field Campaign

I have had the pleasure of working with two groups of elementary school students this year as their GLOBE mentor. They attend Cedar Grove Elementary School in Clarksburg, MD. My primary goal was to install an instrument box with a rain gauge and a multi-day thermometer at their school, and to help them collect and report data to GLOBE.  Here they are collecting data:

As we observed the weather patterns, they began to ask what the difference was between weather and climate. I gave them a mini-lesson and showed them a good NASA “Our World” video called “What is Weather?” They noticed that even though it was late October, we were having some pretty warm weather, and they asked if I knew why that was happening.

So I showed them this ClimateBits video about the El Niño, and they were very excited about learning more. A few of them said they had heard about the El Niño in the news, and wanted to learn more. I suggested we collect temperature and precipitation data over the winter, and compare it to the normal climatic data to see if our weather patterns changed due to the current El Niño event. They were excited, and we began to learn more about what the predictions were for our area due to the El Niño.

The maps below show the meteorologists predictions for the US for both temperature and precipitation:

We saw that we had a 33% chance of having warmer temperatures and more precipitation while the El Niño conditions were in force. 

For the months of November, December, and January, we collected data ourselves but also used the National Weather Service data to compare our daily maximum, average, and minimum temperatures and our monthly amount of precipitation to the normal climatic averages that have been collected since 1880 for our area.

Here we are graphing our observed temperatures against the climatic averages:

We also counted the number of days that the temperatures were above, the same, and below the normal temperatures, and we looked at the differences between the observed monthly precipitation and the normal monthly precipitation. Here we are working on our data tables and analyzing the patterns and trends that we found:

Here are the graphs and data tables that we made-

November:

Data Table for Temperature and Precipitation- November 2015

Number of days with more than a trace of precipitation: 10/30

Total amount of liquid precipitation observed: 83.82 mm

Total average amount of precipitation for November:  87.884 mm

difference: - 23.064 mm

December-

Data Table for Temperature and Precipitation- December 2015

Number of days with more than a trace of precipitation: 14/31

Total amount of liquid precipitation observed: 148.586 mm

Total average amount of precipitation for December:  85.598 mm

difference: + 62.992 mm

January-

Data Table for Temperature and Precipitation- January 2016

Number of days with more than a trace of precipitation: 5/31

Total amount of liquid precipitation observed: 88.90 mm

Total average amount of precipitation for January:  77.47 mm

difference: + 11.43 mm

When we analyzed the data, we found the following:

We concluded that our weather in this region was impacted in the way that the meteorologists had predicted. We had warmer than average temperatures and more precipitation than we usually do during the months of November, December, and January.

We found that the daily maximum temperature was higher than normal for 66/92 days, which means that about 72% of the time, the daily maximum temperature was above the normal maximum temperature.

We found that the daily average temperature was above the normal average temperature for 60/92 days, which means that about 65% of the days had above normal average temperatures.

We found that the daily minimum temperature was above normal minimum temperatures for 52/92 days, which means that about 57% of the days had above normal minimum temperatures.

We found that the total amount of precipitation for the three-month period was 321.306 mm. The normal amount of precipitation for this time period is 250.952 mm. The difference between these two amounts is + 70.354 mm, which means we had about 30% more precipitation than we normally do during these three month  

We love working with GLOBE and collecting weather data, and look forward to continuing to be “Weather Watchers” for Cedar Grove Elementary School!