How To Use This Data Unit
The Power Point is divided into five sections. The introduction section introduces the field of Paleoclimate and how it used to reconstruct ancient climate. The most important section is the data analysis section. These sections are based on a well-developed Tree Ring Precipitation Data Analysis activity adapted from MY NASA DATA tree ring analysis activity. There are two extensions to this activity - calculating data anomaly and standard deviation, which are two very important statistical measurements in science especially in the evaluation of climate data. There are various files that accompany this lab including. The Power Point will help guide the lab especially the use of Excel and doing statistical computations.
The editable powerpoint can be downloaded here.
A pdf of the powerpoint is also available here.
Introduction
Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient climates. Climate ‘proxies’ allow scientists to go back in time and reconstruct the climate conditions over long periods of time - hundreds, thousands even millions of years ago. Climate ‘proxies’ are sources of information from natural archival sources such as: tree rings; ice cores from glaciers and continental ice sheets; corals; sediment cores; and fossilized pollen among others. Climate data can also be obtained from historical records or diaries prior to the 19th Century.
This data section will give students the opportunity to compare two sets of data – tree rings and precipitation. The will retrieve precipitation data from an open data sources from MY NASA DATA which contains data from various satellite sources. Students will have the opportunity to use Excel as a data analysis and computational tool to produce various graphs. The students will learn how to perform statistical analysis of the data to render it useful. This will give them an opportunity to learn how to use some of the methodologies and techniques used by climatologists and scientist in supporting fields.
Data Section III. Importing and Analyzing Data In Excel
Instructional Goal
Learn how to download satellite precipitation data sets from MY NASA DATA archive to import the data into Excel. Generate spreadsheets and graphs to facilitate data analysis rendering it useful in order to compare to the tree ring data.
Learning Outcomes
Access data using various parameters to access a specific data set corresponding to the tree ring being analyzed.
Download data from MY NASA DATA and import it into Excel.
Use Excel commands and tools to generate spreadsheets using statistical formals to render data ready for graphing.
Generate various types of graphs – column, line, and scattered – to analyze precipitation data and compare it to tree ring data.
Identify seasonal patterns using the data.
Lab Activities
- Tree Rings EPA Lab (EPA - Environmental Protection Agency), Slide 11, Online link
