zzzHosmayLopez-GrADSresults

=Homework # 1= =Basic parts: Under Construction!!!!=

1. Download and read, or use OpenDAP to read into memory, the 3-4 variables in 3 dimensions from "Getting Data" page at left.

These are the GrADS scripts to do the plots Question # 2 script Question # 3 script Question # 4 script Question # 5 script = =

2. Calculate zonally averaged P and v over longitude, and plot the resulting latitude-time series.
First, note that the overall distribution of precipitation is more evenly uniform in the zonal mean, of course this is an average. Also note that the color bar match with the same color for both panels, so we only needed one color bar here. This was controlled with the 'set rbrange command'. 



Here, I choose not to contour values in between -1 and 1 m/s, this was done by the 'set black -1 1' command. This will set the undesired contour color to the same color as the background which is set in the 'set display color' command. On the zonally averaged v-wind (top panel), note that the mean meridional circulation is evident. It is usually stronger in the southern hemisphere.

3. Average air temperature over both lat and lon, to make a 12-month time series. Which season has the warmest global mean surface temperature? Can you understand why?


The warmest zonal mean temperature is during the Northern Hemisphere summer, this is because of the strong land-ocean contrast between the two hemispheres. A more continental hemisphere will have a more extreme seasonal cycle due to the considerable low heat capacity of land as compared to water. Therefore, when we average globally, the stronger signal of the more continental hemisphere will overwhelms the moderate seasonality of the more oceanic Southern hemisphere.

4. Make a map of the temporal (i.e. seasonal) standard deviation of precipitation, expressed as a percentage of the annual mean precipitation. This might be one definition of a "monsoonal" climate.
This plot depicts regions where variability in precipitation is stronger than the annual mean, that is, regions with monsoonal climate which have strong seasonality in precipitation. Most of these regions are over deserts and in the eastern Pacific cold tongue, where precipitation is scarce and occurs in short bursts.

5. What is the space-time standard deviation of 'air' (temperature)?
The space-time standard deviation for the global temperature is 15.2336 deg C. We have to be aware that if we do global average, due to the geometry of the planet, the polar regions will be oversampled as compared to lower latitudes. Therefore, a cosine function of latitude needs to be included. The good thing is that the AAVE function in GrADS has that weighting function already.