Blogs

Impacts of El Nino As Seen Through GLOBE Student Observations

In the fall of 2016, the students in my Weather and Climate class, GEPL 4490/5490, at the University of Toledo developed projects based on El Nino. The students in class were give the task to look at GLOBE data from a part of the world in which El Nino has an effect. The students were also tasked to do research on El Nino and La Nina to see what it is.

 

The students looked at the following locations:

Taiwan 2015 – Nicole Jablonski, Bailey Hafner, Cortnee Halpin

Japan 1998 – Sean Smith,

Australia 1998 – Madhusanka Jayawardhana, Josh Coll, and Justin Maluchnik

As you can see in this document, in the winter, El Nino is expected to cause dry conditions in Australia, cool weather in Taiwan and Japan experiences warmer weather in an El Nino year.

During the 1997-1998 El Nino, the Boyne Island Environmental Education Centre in Australia experienced warmer temperatures than average from December to March. And precipitation was lower than average from February through April and then above average May and June.

Taiwan experienced below average rainfall in the spring. The Wu-Ling High School in Taiwan had rainfall on 34% of the days in 2015. The New Taipei Muni ipal Jin-Shan High School had 35% of days that recorded rain in 2015. Houjia Junior High School had rain on 41% of the days in 2016. Students found through research that Taiwan experienced less typhoons and higher temperatures in fall months. Temperatures were much higher than average with 37 C recorded on June 19, 2015 at Wu-Ling High School and Dan-Feng High School recorded 38.4 C on July 23, 2015.

 

 

 

 

More Blog Entries