Project title: Is autumn in Malta disappearing?

Team: Autumn Sleuths

St Nicholas College, Secondary School – Dingli   Ħad-Dingli   Malta   7 Student’s age: 12-13 years old, 14-15 years old

Is there evidence to support the popular belief that the autumn season in Malta is disappearing?

In Malta warm temperatures of around 25 degrees Celsius and drought, typical of the summer season are persisting in September, October, November and also December. There is also a perception that rainfall during autumn is also decreasing. This has led to a popular belief that autumn is disappearing in Malta as a result of climate change. In this investigation we tried to look for evidence to proof or disproof this popular perception.
We decided to collect average monthly temperature and rainfall data in Malta for the months of September, October, November and December from the years 1922 to 2022 from the Meteorological Office of Malta. Although autumn starts on 21 September and ends on 20 December we collected data for the whole of September and December since September is the month when the summer temperature starts to decline and only the last week of the month of December is winter.
We observed trends in these data to investigate whether the temperature during these months are getting warmer and rainfall is decreasing. We also interviewed the meteorological officers during a visit at the Meteorological Office at Ħal Luqa airport.

With the data collected we plotted the following graphs:
Temperature graph for average autumn temperature (September to December) Malta from 1922 to 2022 (Figure 1)
Rainfall graph for total autumn rainfall (September to December)Malta from 1922 to 2022 (Figure 2)
Temperature graphs comparing average temperature per month from 1922 to 2022 (Figure 3)
Rainfall graphs comparing total rainfall per month from
1922 to 2022 (Figure 4)
We also found graphs and charts with older data (1901 to 2021) from the website Climate Change Knowledge Portal.

After analysing this data we concluded that:
Autumn is getting warmer (as shown in figure 1, figure 3, figure 5 and figure 6).
Average temperature for each autumn month, i.e. September, October, November and December has increased these last 30 years (as shown in figure 1).
Total rainfall in autumn is variable (as shown in figure 2 and figure 7) but September is getting wetter and December is getting drier (as shown in figure 4).
Temperature and rainfall records recorded during autumn 2022 (shown in figure 8) indicate that the above trends may continue.

WE took the following actions:
Two videos were made the impact of fashion industry and electronic waste.
These topics were chosen because both are areas of interest to youths. The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world and electronic gadgets are very popular amongst youths.
Participation in local TV programmes to promote message passed through video An Ethical Wardrobe to a national audience.
Shared the message with wider school community through school’s social media
We participated in a consultation meeting with the Minister of the Environment, Energy and Enterprise on National Strategy for the Environment 2050. We passed on a total of eight proposal. We presented here the two that are most related to climate change.
Second-hand goods sold in school foyer to emphasise one of the 5Rs.
A visit to the Meteorological Office where we interviewed the meteorologists
working there made us aware of the observations needed to observe climate change.

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Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
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