NOTE TO TEACHERS: 
These procedures are written to show you how you might use these technologies to teach science concepts. Suggested questions, approaches, and expected answers are all provided. Therefore, these activity descriptions should be used as a guide for your instructional planning, rather than as step-by-step directions for students.

Getting Started

In this activity you will use a spreadsheet and its graphing capabilities to compare the weather patterns of the most recent El Niņo years (1997-98) with historical weather patterns in a specific region. You will need data on monthly temperature for each year of the past several decades.

One good source of historic weather data is the NOAA Regional Climatic Center web site. 

Some regional climate centers provide more easily accessible historic weather data than others. You will find the Western Regional and Southern Regional Climate Centers have the most easily accessible data for our purposes. Initially, you may want to choose a location from one of these regions to explore.

The examples shown here will use San Diego, CA. To access the monthly temperature data from the Western Regional Climate Center web page, go to Historical Climatic Data, then Western U.S. Historical Summary (individual stations). From this screen, select So. California, then select the San Diego WSO. Under "Period of Record," select Monthly Temperature Listing (Average) under the heading "Temperature." 

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