The question will require extensive use of Excel, which is good practice.
1.Warming?
Pick a state other than Massachusetts. Gather monthly data from the NOAA going back at least a hundred years!
a.Graph the average temperature for each month, using the available data.
b.Was the last decade hotter than the historical average? Show/explain/justify.
Hint: You might find it useful to fit a curve to the data, perhaps a third-degree polynomial; click on the data series and choose the option to fit a line.
c.Report the total annual precipitation, in inches and in centimeters.
Hints: Create a column into which you will put the year using commands such as =TRUNC(C2/100) . Next to it create a column with the months. Then highlight the headings and data in the year, month, PCP and TAVG columns. Pick the Insert tab and then select Pivot Table. Put years into the rows, months into the columns, and PCP into the bottom-right cell.
Source
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/onlineprod/drought/xmgr.html
Then follow these links:
U.S. Divisional Data
Click on the State tab
Pick the state, starting and ending dates, and Comma Delimited Text Output
Acknowledge that you are not a robot (!), and click Submit
The file can now be downloaded; it will appear as CDODivxxx.txt, where xxx is some number. Right click on the file and save target as or save link as somewhere on your computer.
Open Excel, and open the file that you have downloaded. The Text Import Wizard will appear; click on Delimited and then Next and then check Space and then Finish. This should bring up the data on the page.
Each column has a heading, which is given in the first row (but it might need to be re-aligned). PCP refers to precipitation (in inches per month), TAVG is the average temperature (in F), and the other columns are as follows:
PDSI. Palmer Drought Severity Index. Ranges from -7 (severe drought) to 7 (very wet spell).
PHDI. Palmer Hydrological Drought Index. Similar in range and purpose to PDSI.
ZNDX. An index that shows the deviation of moisture from normal. Rarely less than -3 (far less precipitation than usual) or more than +3 (unusually wet).
SPxx. Standardized Precipitation Index. Shows the relative drought over the past xx months. So SP02 = -0.14 means that precipitation over the previous 2 months was slightly lower than usual, and SP06 = 0.23 means that the last six months were somewhat wetter than usual. Varies from about -3 (dry) to +3 (wet); the values of -99.99 refer to missing values.
CDD. Cooling degree days. Reference temperature is 65F.
HDD. Heating degree days. Reference temperature is 65F.
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