Weather Tracking: Seattle and Troy

By Esha Nair

Section 1: Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a place and time. In this project we

recorded the weather patterns for Troy, MI and Seattle, WA. We gathered information

like the air pressure , which is the weight in which air in the atmosphere is pushing down

on an area; humidity, the amount of water vapor in the air; perception, the amount of

rain or snow fall from the sky; we also found the wind speed(when air moves to high

and lower pressure) and wind direction. The goal of our investigation was to create

relationships between two weather factors. Our group saw that the higher the

temperature is the lower the air pressure.

Section 2: During the project we collected data from various sources like, Smith Middle

Schools Weather equipment, and using a app called WeatherLink we were able to

gather Troy weather every day. We did the same thing for Seattle but we used the

Space Needle Weather equipment instead. For surface maps and temperature maps we

used Weather.com a website that allowed us to see weather maps for that day. We

tried to make sure our experiment was controlled by collecting data around the same

time each day (9:00-9:05am). Our group gathered and analyzed data by putting it in a

data table. We collected the temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, wind

speed, and wind direction. This process of gathering information took about two weeks
(not including weekends). One weakness throughout the project was that we lost track

of gathering some items. For example, some of the surface and temperature maps were

not used in our data.

Section 3: When there is a higher temperature there is a lower air pressure. We know

this because, when we looked

through our data we realized

that there was a similarity in

the temperature and air

pressure. When ever the

temperature was a higher

number the air pressure

appeared to be lower than

usual. For example on May, 1 there was a temperature of 48 degrees and the air

pressure was 30.2 Hg, and when it was 54 degrees the air pressure was 29.5 Hg as you

can see there is the air pressure is lower when the temperature is higher, 29.5 is less

than 30.2. When there is a higher temperature the molecules are less dense, because

the molecules are moving faster and spread apart. Things that are less dense tend to

have lower air pressures, because the air is lighter and gravity doesn't have to push

down as hard.