Historical Temperatures II

Grace Meyer
UNST 125G
2.7.16

1.

(a). What is the hottest year on record in each of the sites and how hot was it in
each city that year? (Because youre plotting averages, you wont be able to get

the temperatures directly off the chart (except for Boise City), but can use the
chart to point you to which row of data you should look at).
Bangkok 1998, 29.56 deg. C, 85.2 deg. F
Olympia 2015, 11.68 deg. C, 53 deg. F
(b) What are the benefits and problems (pros and cons) of using running means?
Using running means means that the data is more flat and patterns can be
more easily seen; however, the more specific data is not shown and the outliers
are eliminated. This makes it more difficult to compare things on a year by year
basis. The uncertainty is also much higher when using a running mean.
2.

(a) Were the 1930s anomalously warm compared to the 1920s in both your
locations?
In Bangkok, the 1920s and the 1930s were pretty much the same, they
were .03 degrees C apart, which is a very small difference compared to the 5
degree differences in some places.
In Olympia The 1920s were about 0.12 degrees celcius warmer than the
1930s.
(b) Compare the temperature anomalies since the 1950s (i.e., from 1960 on) in
both cities. Do you see any trends in the data? Are they the same overall in each
location?
Both cities have an increase in temperature but in Olympia the anomaly is
+0.14 and the anomaly in Bangkok is +0.43. This shows that there is a greater
increase in temperature in Bangkok than Olympia; however, both do indeed
increase. Both locations seem to begin a positive increased slope around 19751985. Olympia has a huge spike in temperature from 1939 to 1942.
(c) What are the pros and cons of using temperature anomalies?
The anomalies show us how the temperature in question is
different from the standard temperature. This means we can see
patterns in both increase and decrease in relation to this thirty-year
span. It can help us to see if the climate is drastically changing over a
span of time.

3.

a) Why do you think the period from 1951-1980 was chosen as the
baseline for comparing temperature changes?
1951-1980 was a pretty average time span in the way of temperature. The slope
is fairly flat and does not have many outliers making this the ideal span of time for
a baseline average. This; however, is only relevant for the 20th century and on
and not anything before that.
b) Why is the range of the data (particularly the initial data) in terms of year-toyear variation so much more limited than that for a given city, like Boise City, OK?
The global data only has the ability to show widespread patterns because
of its high uncertainty values and lack of outliers. It can only be used to show
global patterns of increase or decrease.
c) Compare the global time series with the series for Boise City, OK. Are the
trends over the last 50 years (1965 to present) the same? Lets get specific with
this question.
Up until 1950, both temperature anomaly patterns stay pretty similar
around +/- 2 and then after that they diverge a bit with Boise City. The R squared
number is 0.6 more for the global temperature anomaly over time than Boise City.
This insinuates that the slope is much steeper for the global rather than Boise
City.

Y=0.0174x 34.308
R2= 0.83984