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How does elevation affect surface temperature?

Organization(s):Main Street Intermediate School
Country:United States of America
Student(s):Brynn Prack Brook Elizabeth Heyman Kayli Bergman
Grade Level:Upper Primary (grades 3-5, ages 8-11)
GLOBE Educator(s):Marcy Burns
Contributors:
Report Type(s):Mission Earth Report, International Virtual Science Symposium Report
Protocols:Surface Temperature
Presentation Poster: View Document
Language(s):
Date Submitted:03/29/2019
Our school has been measuring surface temperature during the month of December each year since 2006. We thought it would be interesting to compare surface temperature data taken at schools at different elevations. We found 8 schools in addition to our school that collected data at the same time. We thought the schools at the higher elevations would have colder surface temperature and the lower elevations would show warmer surface temperatures. We learned from the data that, for the most part, that our hypothesis was correct. However, the data also suggests that other things may also affect the data. More research needs to be done to find out how air temperature, distance from the equator, and landforms might also affect surface temperature data.


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Comments

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GLOBE Scientist (inactive)
5 Years Ago
Hello! Thank you for sharing your project. I have two questions:
1) How did you decide which schools to include in your study?
2) What types of weather measurements do you think are most likely to influence surface temperature?

-Sarah Bogen (USA)
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Student 4 of Marcy Burns GLOBE Scientist
5 Years Ago
To answer your first question, we looked to see which schools had grass data that was consistent. The schools' elevations also needed to vary. It was difficult to find schools that had a lot of data the same time we took our data.
To answer your second question, we think that snow, sun, and clouds are most likely to affect the surface temperature.