W&C Extra Credit Assignment
The objectives of this optional extra credit assignment are to describe the climate of a selected place by applying the knowledge you have gained throughout the course and over the remaining few weeks.
You may select any place you like. However, you should be careful to select a place for which you will be able to find climatic data (in particular mean monthly temperature and precipitation) and make sure that it is not too large an area (as opposed to a place) such that the climate is variable. For example, it would be best to select the city of Honolulu, Hawaii rather than just Hawaii the state, or the island of Oahu. If you not sure about your selection you can message me in Teams or email and ask.
Once you have selected your place you should start your essay with a brief introductory description of the location (including its latitude) and the physical setting of your place (i.e. is it coastal or continental, at low elevation or high, tropical, polar, etc.). This doesn’t have to be very long, up to one page of text (dbl. sp.) should suffice (4 pts). You may want to include a map showing the location of your place (2 pts) and it would be interesting to know why you selected this particular place.
You should then begin by describing the weather of your place in first terms of the temperature and precipitation characteristics; at a minimum the mean monthly temperature and precipitation. You will probably want to include a climate graph (aka climograph) and/or table (2 pts) depicting mean monthly temperature and precipitation data and you should refer to these figures/tables in your discussion.
In your discussion you should note the following, as they apply to your place.
- Are any times of the year particularly hot or cold? Why? (2 pts)
- Does your place experience four distinct seasons or is the temperature fairly consistent all year? (2 pts)
- Based on our discussion of seasons and variations in the intensity and duration of insolation, or continental versus marine type climates, can you explain why this might be the case. (4 pts)
- Is your place consistently dry (e.g. located in a desert), persistently wet (e.g. a tropical rain forest), or highly variable (e.g. a monsoon climate). Or is it somewhere in-between; like Brandon? Can you explain why? (2 pts)
In addition to the above , and depending of the unique climatic charactersitics of your place, select up to two additional topics to discuss ( 3 pts each). You may select from the list below or include something that is unique to your place that is not included below or even covered in this course, as long as it is relevant to the climate of your place.
- radiation/energy balance
- humidity
- cloud cover
- winds (local and/or prevailing, or others such as Chinooks)
- precipitation
- severe weather
You should submit your final essay in a properly formatted Word document; don’t forget to include a title page and subheadings. (2 pts) Be sure to include references for information that you cite in your essay, including maps, figures, tables, photos, etc. (2 pts) You can reference the style guide available here for proper formatting of citations within the text of your document and the list of references at the end. There is no specific length, but I would expect that your essay should be at least five double-spaced pages of text (12 pt. font), not including figures, tables, a map, etc. or the list of references at the end.
This assignment is due by the end of the day Friday, April 12th. I will add an assignment to Teams so that you can upload your essay there. If you have any additional questions please let me know.