Weather and climate

For this exercise, you will need to use a computer with Internet access, or your teacher may choose to collect the information for the class. You may use data for the capital city of your province or territory, or select another location from the city list on the Environment Canada Web site at www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca. Set up this exercise at the end of one month so that you can track the temperatures for the entire following calendar month. 

1. Use the Past Weather link on the side menu to find the Climate Normals for the city you've chosen. Check to be sure that that location also reports daily highs and lows on their weather forecast Web page. 

2. Find the normal daily maximum and minimum temperatures for that city for next month, and draw lines on the graph on the next page to represent these temperatures. Use a different colour for each, but don't use red or blue. For example, if the normal daily maximum is 16.2 C, you could draw a straight line in green at that point running from the first day of the month to the end of the month.

 3. The Past Weather section of this Web site gives you Climate Data Online as well. You can use this link once a week for the following month to retrieve the actual daily high and low temperatures for that same city. Plot the daily temperatures using red for the maximum and blue for the minimum. Make a line graph by connecting the dots that represent the temperature values. 

4. At the end of the month, compare the lines representing the actual temperatures with the lines representing the normal or average temperatures. a. Did the actual temperatures match the normal ones? b. Which lines would be considered weather and which would be climate? c. In your own words, explain why they are different.