Geography 103:  Weather

Exercise 2B.  Hourly weather records from CSUN

 

 

There is a link to the CSUN weather station data from the geography home page at http://www.csun.edu/geography/

 

Current hourly weather records from the CSUN station can be found by following this link, selecting “Weather Station” and then “Current Weather Conditions at CSUN”.

 

Past weather data is stored in Excel files and can be accessed through this class web page (Weather Data).

 

In Exercise 2A you plotted the temperature data for June 23, 2002 using Excel.  In this exercise you will plot both the temperature and the incoming solar radiation on the same plot, and see how they vary relative to each other throughout the day.  After opening up the weather data file in Excel, you should select the plotting icon (“Chart Wizard”) and then choose “Custom Types” followed by “Lines on 2 Axes”.  This allows you to use the left axis for temperature and the right axis for radiation with two different scales.  (Temperature goes from about 5 ºC to about 30 ºC, whereas solar radiation goes from 0 to about 1100 W/m2.)  You can name one series “Temperature” and the other “Radiation”.  Format your chart like the example shown below for March 8, 2002.

 

Using your graph for June 23, 2002, what can you say about when the temperature peaks relative to when the solar radiation peaks?  Why?  When is the temperature lowest?  Why at this time?