Homework for Chapter 3 - Seasonal and Daily Temperatures

SHOW ALL WORK , CIRCLE THE CORRECT ANSWER, PLEASE BE NEAT AND STAPLE YOUR HOMEWORK!

ALSO, PLEASE USE A SPREADSHEET FOR ALL GRAPHS

Follow the Problem solving steps discussed in class

1. Go to the LSC Meteorology web page that displays our weather station current data. Select the data for 21 September, 2012. Save a .csv file of the data. Import this data into Excel and make the following plots:

• Temperature versus time.
• Net radiation verus time
• short wave in and short wave out versus time
• long wave in and long wave out versus time

****Please view this video to learn how to import the weather station data into Excel.****

****Please view this video to learn how to create good graphs in Excel.****

a. When is the minimum and maximum surface temperature observed?

b. Is the temperature increasing (decreasing) when Enet is positive (negative)? Anotate on your graphs.

c. From the short wave radiation plots, what is the albedo of the ground surrounding the weather station at local noon?

d. Speculate, based on the surface data, whether or not fog was present on the morning of 21 September, 2012.

EXTRA CREDIT: The temperature of the earths surface is dependent on the net amount of radiation, (net radiative flux), gained or lost at that location.  The net radiative flux in the vertical direction has contributions from four different sources.  Physically describe these four sources.