Geography 417: California For Educators			Geography Lab: Climographs

Geography Lab: Reading and Creating Climographs

Before you Start: It's always a good idea to print a copy of this exercise out first.  Then you can pencil  in your answers on the paper copy as you go through the assignment.  Should your internet connection fail, then you won't have to start over.  Also, you'll have a 'hard copy' as proof you did the assignment.  When you want to enter your answers, remember to press TAB after you have typed in a response.  You can also use your mouse to move to the next response box.  DO NOT press enter until you are finished.  Once you press Enter or click the Submit button below, you will be redirected to a page that displays your answers.  It's a good idea to keep a copy of this as well.

OH...and you'll need Microsoft Excel to complete the assignment.  If you don't have it at home, go to the library or somewhere else where you can get access to MS Excel. 

Background.  The state of California requires 4th graders to be able to:

•  1) Identify the state capital and describe the various regions of California, including how their characteristics and physical environments (e.g., water, landforms, vegetation, climate) affect human activity.

• 2) Use maps, charts, and pictures to describe how communities in California vary in land use, vegetation, wildlife, climate, population density, architecture, services, and transportation.

While this doesn't cover all of those  two standards, this is an effective introduction to one type of graphical device by which you and your students can learn how to 1) learn about the variety of climatic conditions in California and 2) learn how read and construct a climograph, a useful graphical device that can accurately characterize the climate of any places including those in California.

Again, though this is not difficult, it is imperative that you master a few of these basic skills and that you understand the logic behind climographs so that you can explain them to your own students.  This exercise could probably be used in an elementary school setting.  Other courses, such as Introduction to Physical Geography or World Regional Geography should perhaps offer a more in-depth at climographs and how they are used.

It might be best to peruse Michael Ritter's website at UW Stevens Point.  It's part of an on-line physical geography textbook. 

Part I:  Vocabulary and Fundamentals

Fill in the blank:

1.  According to Michael Ritter's website, precipitation is depicted with on a climograph and temperature is depicted on a climograph with a    graph.

Part II: Making a Paper Climograph.

Perhaps the best way to learn how to read a climograph is to make some.  First you need climate data.  Remember that for the most part climate is the pattern of temperature and precipitation over a series of years for a place.  A cool website called worldclimate.com allows you to search for temperature and precipitation data for many, many cities around the world.  Click on the link and open worldclimate.com in a separate window.

Once you are in the site, type into the search box: Santa Monica Pier.  The server will return a link to the Santa Monica Pier.  Click on it and it will give you a rather lengthy list of places nearby Santa Monica Pier for which data is also available.  Scroll down through the list until you find Santa Monica Pier.

Below Santa Monica Pier are several links that contain data.  Click on 24-hr Average Temperature and this will open take you to a page featuring a table of average monthly temperatures recorded at the Santa Monica Pier for each month.  There are several ways of calculating this bit of data, but generally one adds the daily high temperature to the daily low and divides that by two to get an "average daily temperature".  Those are then averaged over the course of a month to get the average monthly temperature.

3.  If today's high temperature was 100 degrees and today's low was 50 degrees, today's average 24 hr average would be: degrees.

4.   August is hottest month in Santa Monica with an average daily temperature of degrees Fahrenheit.

5 . is the month with the coolest average daily temperature in Santa Monica at 56.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

6.  The range of temperature is the difference between the hottest and coolest months average daily temperature.  For Santa Monica, the yearly range is degrees Fahrenheit.

Next open this link to this blank climograph or this one (.pdf).  They were adapted from this website, which allows you to view or download a PowerPoint tutorial in making climographs. 

Print out your blank climograph (you may need to use the "landscape" setting on your printer) and using the correct graphical symbol (line or bar) plot the temperature by month for Santa Monica Pier.  Make sure that you refer to the scale on the right hand side of the climograph to plot temperature.

Make sure that you title the graph with the location and in small type, print the source of the data and range of years this data was collected.  Also it would be good to put on the latitude and longitude coordinates.  You might even put the elevation as well.   Put your name on the lower left. 

In your browser window displaying Santa Monica's temperature table, click on the back button.  Again you will see the list of climate variables for Santa Monica pier.  Note that there are two of them for Average Rainfall.  Though either is fine for our purposes, the uppermost one has the longest temporal frame for its data.  Answer the three questions below:

7.  What month is rainiest at Santa Monica Pier?  

8.  June and July on average have inches.  Does that mean it has never rained in Santa Monica during these months?  Look at the data in millimeters and you'll find your answer.

10.  inches is the average yearly rainfall total for Santa Monica Pier. 

** Remember. This is an average and the odd thing about "average" weather is that it seems that it never happens.  Some years it may be very rainy and other very droughty.  Somewhere in the middle is the average, but it may actually be rare to have an "average" year.  This is especially true in desert climates where the standard deviation is more telling than the average.

On the same graph paper that you plotted Santa Monica's temperature, plot its monthly and yearly rainfall totals.  Use the appropriate graphical device for plotting rainfall and use the left axis as a guide for plotting the data. 

 In the box labeled KEY, write the words temperature and rainfall, and next to them draw symbol that indicate to your readers what data the lines and bars represent. 

This graph you will turn in to your instructor on the assigned date.  Make sure your name is on it.

III.  Using Microsoft Excel to make Climographs.

Luckily, we have computer software that can help us create a variety of high quality graphics from data such as this.  Microsoft Excel is probably the most widely used spreadsheet program in the world and it has a few graph making features that you will now use to make a series of climographs of locations around California.  

Step A.  Open MS Excel, you may need to launch it from your start button on the lower taskbar.  From there, if Excel is installed, you will find it by clicking on All Programs and then you'll find it as one of the programs in Microsoft Office.   These directions are written for MS Office 2003, so your version of Excel may be slightly different.  However, since most of the function used in this exercise have long been in Excel, most of the directions should still be easy to follow.

Step B. At the bottom tab on worksheet, double click on the word "Sheet 1" and rename the worksheet Santa Monica. (see screen capture).  Save the file now..use this naming convention: geog417_climo_insert your last name.  So if your last name is Jones, you would save it geog417_climo_jones.doc.

Step C.  Return to your browser window.  Open (or reopen) the webpage that has the rainfall data for Santa Monica Pier.  Place your cursor in the blank, upper leftmost cell of the rainfall table (just to the left of "Jan").  Click and drag your cursor down and to the right until all the data in the table is highlighted.  (see screen capture)

Step D.  Press simultaneous the Control button and C (Ctrl + C) to copy the data.  Or you can click on Edit and select copy from the drop down menu.

Step E.  Return to Excel (Alt + Tab) and paste (Ctrl + V) the data in to the upper left most cell (the cell in column A row 1 is cell A1) (see screen capture)

Step F.  Return to the browser window (Alt + Tab) and click on the back button.  Select from the list of Santa Monica Pier Data the 24 hr Average Temperature .  Repeat steps C through E, copying and pasting the temperature data into Excel, but place it immediately below the rainfall data.  The blank cell to the left of Jan and above degrees C (°C).  It would be in cell A4.  (see screen capture).

Step G.  Now you have the data necessary to make a climograph, but you must delete some of it to make the graph look better.  First let's eliminate the rain data recorded in millimeters.  Place your cursor on the number two (2) on to the left of the second column that begins with "mm". Notice that your cursor turns into a bold right pointing arrow ®  . Click once to select (or highlight) the entire row. 

Step H.  Click on the word Edit in the menu bar at the top of your window.  From the drop down menu select delete (see screen capture).  The ENTIRE second row of data should disappear.  Repeat the this deletion process with the second set of months and the row of Celsius temperature data.  You should have only the top row of months, followed by a row of "inches" and a row of "° F". 

Step H.2  Next, you need to move the year end average one cell away from the monthly data to get a nice graph. Place your cursor on the column N header cell above the word "Year" in cell N1.    This will highlight the column.  Next, select from the "Insert" drop down menu "Column".  This will put a blank column between the year end totals and the December averages.   You are now ready to graph.

Step I.  Place your cursor in cell A1 (upper left) and drag your mouse to cell N3, containing the yearly average for temp (61.2).  All the data should be highlighted. 

Step J.  Next, click on Insert on the top menu bar and select from the drop down menu items "Chart" (see screen capture).

Step K.  A Chart Wizard dialog box will appear and you should click on the top tab labeled "Custom Types".  From the list of custom chart types, select "Line-Column on 2 Axes".  (see screen capture). 

Step L.  Click the "Next>" button.  All the default option on this "Chart Wizard -Step 2 of 4" dialog box should be OK, but I encourage to at least take a peak at the information and options on the series tab. You may find them useful another day.  Click Next.

Step M.  The "Step 3" dialog window allow you to add page titles and axis titles to your graph, as well as several other options.  Title your graph "Santa Monica Pier: Climograph"  Add appropriate titles to the X axis and both Y axes. You may want to move the legend to the bottom (see screen capture).  A really nice touch would be to add the latitude, longitude and elevation data into the secondary X axis box.

Step N.  Click next and make sure the chart (graph) is going to placed as an object in the worksheet you have named Santa Monica.  Click Finish and congratulate yourself on making an electronic version of a climograph.  Save your file before you go any further.

Step O.  Next make a climograph for Eureka, California.   You'll need to go back to the home page of worldclimate.com and type in Eureka, CA into their search window box.  Use the data from: EUREKA, CA., UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.  Then repeat the steps from above.  Remember to do rainfall first, then temperature.

Answer the next two question, then finish up with steps P-R.

10.  Eureka gets about inches of rain each year.

11.  The average monthly temperature in Eureka never varies by more than about degrees Fahrenheit over the course of a year.

Step P.  Next insert 2 new worksheets.  Click Insert from top menu bar and select Worksheet from the drop down menu. Press F4 to add a second.

Step Q.  Next, select 3 additional locations in California that are representative of 3 other California climate types.  You may want to pick a high and/or low desert city, a Great Central Valley City, maybe someplace from the San Fernando Valley, or the High Sierras.  Remember to rename each worksheet so that I can identify by looking at the worksheet tabs which towns you have picked.

When you have made a total of 5 climographs, attempt to answer the last bonus question and then submit the answers to this component of the lab by clicking submit below.  You are also to email your excel file as an attachment to your instructor.  Make sure that the file is is properly named ..see naming convention above) and is free of viruses. 

Bonus: Compare your climographs with each other.  Comparisons between the locations could be made easier and more useful to students if the on all the primary and secondary Y axes was consistent for each graph. 

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