Teaching Tips

• Have students compute the difference in min and max records in % to show differences more dramatically.

About the Content

• The daily records summarized in the tool are compiled from a subset of stations in the Global Historical Climatological Network. A station is defined as the complete daily weather records at a particular location, having a unique identifier in the GHCN-Daily dataset.
• For a station to be considered for any parameter, it must have a minimum of 30 years of data with more than 182 days complete each year. This is effectively a "30-year record of service" requirement but allows for inclusion of some stations which routinely shut down during certain seasons.
• Comments from expert scientist:
  Scientific strengths:
  - analyzing raw data
  - explanation of what constitutes a science 'station'
  - could use this data to plot graphs, make figures, make interpretations
  Suggestions:
  - If high max/min and low max/min is referring to temperature, might want to add that in.

About the Pedagogy

• Simple, straightforward,and updated daily.
• This tool provides simple counts of weather records to provide insight into recent climate behavior. Although not a definitive way to identify trends in the number of records set over time, trends over a year's time are interesting and informative when comparing high and low max and min temperatures nationally. Data is split into daily, monthly, and all-time records.

• This resource engages students in using scientific data.
  See other data-rich activities

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• The data used in the tool are raw and have not been assessed for the effects of changing station instrumentation and time of observation.