Week 12 - Climate vs. Weather

Lab:

Climate is a 30-year average - if weather is my moon then climate is my personality
Climate change is 99.9% human-caused.

If we are talking about climate change then it has to happen over time, a weathering event like snowing in June is not considered climate change.

To teach climate change you have to make it personal or else your brain does NOT care

Have to make it personal: IOWA

Driving Question: is the Goldfinch, Iowa’s state bird, in danger, and how do we know? What could we measure?

Going to collect and record data
Quiz - use data to tell us if Goldfinch is in danger - but have to relate it directly to our data.

Measuring and Mapping Precipitation in Iowa:

We want to determine how the number of days with heavy rainfall has changed over time?

What does heavy rainfall mean? How many inches of rain is considered “heavy” - more than 1.5 inches in a day

DSM
Centerville
Indianola
Row Avg.
Avg. of First 5 years
2.8 days
6 days
2.6 days
3.8 days
Avg. of Last 5 years
2.6 days
3.4 days
3.4 days
3.13 days
3.133-3.8= -0.667 -0.667 x 100 =
Decrease of 67%

Lecture: Exam

Textbook:

I learned more about the climate change impacts that we can directly see in the state of Iowa. One of the main topics being more precipitation and drought. We talked about this briefly, but the wet years are going to be wetter, and the dryer years will be dryer, ultimately making our climate less neutral and stable for the Goldfinches. I also learned that the campus was still working on repairing damages from the 2008 flood, where the water reached over 20 university buildings and ended up costing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The projected number of days above 90°F in DSM was historically 23 days but by 2050 that number could increase dramatically to 57-68 days.

What I found most helpful: I liked that the textbook is bringing the climate change issue direclty to Iowa and using examples that are actually relevant to us.

Questions? None at the moment

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