Climate graphs LO: To be able to construct a climate graph for the tropical rainforest. To extract information from graphs and use it to explain climate

What is climate? Climate is not the same as weather. Weather is the day to day, even hour to hour, condition of Earth’s lower atmosphere. This means how the amount of rain, sun or wind changes on a regular basis. However, climate is the long term average of atmospheric conditions at a particular place on the Earth’s surface. Britain has a TEMPERATE climate – it has no extremes. Write your own definition of the word climate

What is a climate graph? A climate graph lets us show the precipitation and temperature for a location all on one graph. Look at the two axes on this graph. We are going to create 2 climate graphs today and use them to tell us about the climate of 2 locations.

You need to... Turn your graph paper portrait. LO: to be able to construct a climate graph You need to... Turn your graph paper portrait. Along the bottom draw a line the length of 12 squares. Leave space to draw lines either side and to write underneath. Add the names of the 12 months underneath. Label the axis “Months of the year” Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Next... Add a line down the left hand side numbered 0 to 28. You will need to count up in 2s. Label this axis “Temperature ˚C” 28 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Now... On the right side draw a line the same length. Add on precipitation to 350mm. You will need to go up in 25s. Label this axis “Precipitation in mm” 350 28 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Time to start plotting... We plot temperature in RED as a LINE graph. Eg Jan temperature is 24. we put an x in the middle of the month. Using the rainforest data plot all the temperature information. Now join up the plots with a red line 350 28 x Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Rainforest temperature in ˚C LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Rainforest temperature in ˚C J F M A S O N D 24 25 26 23 22

LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Onto the rain! We plot precipitation in BLUE as a BAR CHART. If it is 300 in Jan it would look like this. Now complete the rest of the information. 28 350 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Rainforest Precipitation in mm LO: to be able to construct a climate graph Rainforest Precipitation in mm J F M A S O N D 300 250 260 270 350 240 230 200 180 170

LO: to extract information from graphs and use it to explain climate Now for the Maths Add up all the months temperatures, then divide your result by 12. This is the average temperature of the rainforest. Are any months the same temperature as the average? What was the range of temperature? (The difference between the highest and lowest temperature) What was the average rainfall? What was the range of rainfall?

A*model answer

Extension Write a description of the climate for the tropical rainforest

LO: to be able to construct a climate graph. LO: to extract information from graphs and use it to explain climate Check out your skills... You need to draw another graph using the same method as before. Complete it using the data for the U.K What do you notice about the two graphs? How is the climate of the U.K. different to the Tropical Rainforests? Month J F M A S O N D Temp 5 6 8 13 15 17 14 11 7 precip 42 43 40 62 56 74 63 58 61 79 83