CIESE - Wonderful World of Weather Project

Lesson #3: Weather and Climate

Overview

In this lesson students will conceptualize the difference between weather and climate. They will make distinctions between the weather and climate reports for a particular region.

Objectives

After completing this lesson, students will be able to:

Describe the difference between weather and climate.
Describe situations where one might use climate rather than weather data.

Materials

Wall map
Small maps and/or atlases
Slips of paper with names of cities
Weather Learning Log

Time: 15 minutes a day for accessing and recording the weather information. One class period for Activity#2.

Teacher Preparation: .

For Activity #1 Prepare a list of cities(one city for each group of students) for which current weather conditions are available on the Weather Underground. Choose cities from various locations around the country and at least one city in your state. Put the name of each city on a slip of paper.
Preview the climate data sites below and select and bookmark one of these sites or a combination most appropriate for the ability level of your students
State Climates (Clickable map with 37 states available)
NOAA US Climate Site (Statistics for all states. Access monthly averages for temperature and precipitation by clicking on "Basic Climatology").
World Climate (Average temperature for selected US and foreign cities).
Regional Climates (US climate data by section of the country)

Procedures

Acitivity #1 Weather
For this activity do the following:

Have a brief discussion to review the weather variables that the students have been studying.
Tell the students that, for the purpose of this lesson, they will be collecting precipitation and temperature data only.
Divide students into small groups.
Have each group pick a slip of paper with a city name on it.
They should find the city on their desk maps; then one student from each group should come to wall map and mark the city.
Students should enter the names of their cities in their Weather Learning Logs.
Each group will use The Weather Underground site to chart the temperature and precipitation for the city every day for a week.
Tell the students that they will be using the information that they collect to do the next activity.

Activity #2 Climate
For this activity, do the following:

One student from each group will report on the weather data that their group has collected. They should consider such questions as:
- Which day had the most precipitation? The least?
- Did the weather report change every day? Every hour?
- Which day had the highest temperature? The lowest?

Direct students to go to the climate information site for the state in which their city is located and look at that data. After each group has had a chance to access the information, lead a whole group discussion, using questions such as:
- What kind of information is given in the climate description?
- How is it different from the weather report?
- When we look out the classroom window, are we looking at climate or weather?
After studying the data, students should be able to construct the concept that weather changes every day and that climate is the average weather in a location over a long period of time. One might say that climate is what weather is "normally" like in a place. The daily recording and averaging of weather information helps to describe the climate of an area.
Lead a whole class discussion centering on the situations in which students might use the information on the climate page rather than the weather page. For example, which would they use to:
- Advise their grandparents on where to retire.
- Find a place to live where it is warm enough to swim all year.
- Plan what to wear the next day.
- Plan an outdoor activity two days from now.
- Plan next summer's vacation to a faraway place.
Have students use their Weather Learning Logs to write their own explanation of the difference between climate and weather.