Project title: Measurement of temperature, humidity and precipitation and comparison with climatic data in Greek cities

Team: MindLab Edu Gr Detectives

MindLab Education   Kalamaria   Greece   37 Student’s age: 10-11 years old, 12-13 years old

How can we record and study climatic parameters such as temperature, humidity and precipitation? Have these parameters changed over the years? And if so, how are they affected by climate change?
Πως μπορούμε να καταγράψουμε και να μελετήσουμε κλιματολογικές παραμέτρους όπως η θερμοκρασία ,η υγρασία και ο υετός; Οι παράμετροι αυτές έχουν μεταβληθεί με το πέρασμα τον ετών; και αν ναι πως επηρεάζονται απ’ την κλιματική αλλαγή;

We are an online group of students from different cities in Greece. Humidity and especially precipitation rates can be indicators of drought monitoring. At the same time temperature is one of the most important parameters in climatology as well as a very important variable in climate change. Our aim is to measure the aforementioned climatological parameters, to compare them with corresponding satellite measurements as well as to investigate their trend over the last five years in relation to the corresponding climatological data . In order to achieve the above objectives, each student created a weather station at home.
First we created our circuit and programmed the microbit appropriately to record the temperature and humidity. In order to make sure that everything is working properly we made a series of measurements indoors and outdoors. Completing and testing stage we programmed the microbit to record the temperature every 1 minute and then placed the microbit outside protected and away from heat sources so that there would be no errors in our measurements. The measurements were taken for a full day. After our measurements were completed we processed these data in order to calculate the average , maximum and minimum values of temperature and humidity. In order to evaluate the accuracy of our measurements using microbit , we compared the above parameters with those recorded by the nearest official weather station in each region. Then, to test whether climate change has affected temperature and precipitation (which are important indicators of drought ) in recent years, we took the average values of these parameters for the period 2016 to 2022, comparing them with the corresponding climatological ,for the regions where the measurements were made. In the next and last step, in order to better understand the drought levels for the period 2019-2022 we examined some satellite images.

From the measurements made by the students in various cities in Greece, we observed that after comparing them with the corresponding meteorological stations, the average temperatures are very close to each other with a difference ranging from 0.1 to 1 C. As for humidity, data for the minimum and maximum at the station were not available but the average value of the station and that measured by the microbit differ quite a lot which is probably due to the fact that humidity is a parameter with a quite local character.
Focusing first on the temperature we observed that in the majority of months the average values of the last years are slightly higher than those of the climate data as well as the average value of all months (increase of about 1C). However, the biggest difference between the 5 years and the climate data was observed in November.
Then we compared the average temperature of November for various cities in Greece from 2016-2022 with the corresponding temperature of the last 50 years. We observed an increasing trend mainly in the northern cities.
We then compared the values for precipitation where the average value for the last few years is 3 mm less which means that the amounts of water received by the soil were less.

To better understand the prevailing situation with respect to precipitation and the existence of drought conditions, we used data from the Sentinel-2 satellite for the period 2019 to 2023 using the normalized moisture content index (NDMI) used to determine water content and monitor drought conditions. We focused on the region of the prefecture of Thessaloniki where we observed that predominantly the urban center is depicted with yellowish coloration indicating generally arid soil and water scarcity.

Climate change is a complex problem that we need to study and raise awareness of in order to help tackle it. For this purpose continuous research is essential, we as students aim to continue such processes as measuring other environmental parameters such as rainfall rates, particulate matter and various greenhouse gases using appropriate sensors.

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This project was automatically translated into English.
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