Precipitation over California, Iowa, and Massachusetts

SAMPLE

Introduction:

Since the group members are from almost a drought country. Therefore, we

were interested to study the precipitation rate in some areas in the United States. At

the beginning, we wanted to compare the precipitation data for some US states to

the precipitation rate in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, we were not able to collect

any precipitation data for Saudi Arabia. we couldn’t find reliable source. Having a

precipitation rate over a region is a lot of data to collect and difficult to represent.

Therefore, the group chose this topic to represent it in the MATLAB project since

it has lots of data. In this project, we are going to cover the precipitation rate over

the following states California, Iowa, and Massachusetts for time between 1980 to

2015 for each month. We chose these states because California is one of the largest

US states, Massachusetts because it’s the state we live in right now, and Iowa

because one of the group members lived there before.

Data & Analysis:

The data was available for different station points and from year 1835

onwards. however, to make the project more focused and more recent we decided

to use the data from1980 to 2015. The excel files for the data was imported in

MATLAB into a matrix and using interpolation and mesh grid network it is

plotted. On X-axis, months from January to December are shown while Y-axis

represent the years from 1980 to 2015. The data for past year is not yet available

completely. Z-axis shows the average precipitation in millimeters.

California:

Figure 1 3d top view

Figure 2 XZ axis view

Figure 3 YZ axis view

California Excel Sheets Dataset:

Figure 4 California Excel sheet 1

Figure 5 California Excel sheet 2

The A column is for years from 1980 to 2015. Columns from B to M represents the data in each month from January to December for each year.

California MATLAB Code:clc clear all y = 1980:2015; x = 1:12; z = xlsread('California Dataset', 'B1:M36'); yi = 1980:.1:2015; xi = 1:.1:12; [xi, yi] = meshgrid(xi, yi); zi = interp2(x, y, z, xi, yi, 'cubic'); mesh(xi, yi, zi) rotate3d on axis([1,12,1980,2015, 0, 500]) xlabel('Months(Jan-Dec)') ylabel('Years') zlabel('Average Monthly Precipitation(mm)') title('California')

Iowa:

Figure 6 3d top view

Figure 7 XZ axis view

Figure 8 YZ axis view

Iowa Excel Sheet Dataset:

Figure 9 Iowa Excel sheet 1

Figure 10 Iowa Excel sheet 2

The A column is for years from 1980 to 2015. Columns from B to M represents the data in each month from January to December for each year.

Iowa MATLAB Code:clc clear all y = 1980:2015; x = 1:12; z = xlsread('Iowa Dataset', 'B1:M36'); yi = 1980:.1:2015; xi = 1:.1:12; [xi, yi] = meshgrid(xi, yi); zi = interp2(x, y, z, xi, yi, 'cubic'); mesh(xi, yi, zi) rotate3d on axis([1,12,1980,2015, 0, 500]) xlabel('Months(Jan-Dec)') ylabel('Years') zlabel('Average Monthly Precipitation(mm)') title('IOWA')

Massachusetts:

Figure 11 3d top view

Figure 12 XZ axis view

Figure 13 YZ axis view

Massachusetts Excel Sheet Dataset:

Figure 14 Massachusetts Dataset Excel sheet 1

Figure 15 Massachusetts Dataset Excel sheet 2

The A column is for years from 1980 to 2015. Columns from B to M represents the data in each month from January to December for each year.

Massachusetts MATLAB Code:clc clear all y = 1980:2015; x = 1:12; z = xlsread('Massachusetts Dataset', 'B1:M36'); yi = 1980:.1:2015; xi = 1:.1:12; [xi, yi] = meshgrid(xi, yi); zi = interp2(x, y, z, xi, yi, 'cubic'); mesh(xi, yi, zi) rotate3d on axis([1,12,1980,2015, 0, 500]) xlabel('Months(Jan-Dec)') ylabel('Years') zlabel('Average Monthly Precipitation(mm)') title('Massachusetts')

Conclusion:

California have more precipitation in the winter comparing to the other seasons. The peak that California had in 2015 was in February. In other hand Iowa had more precipitation in summer comparing to the other seasons. The peak that Iowa had in 2015 was in July. In addition, Massachusetts in the past years had more precipitation in the Fall comparing to the other seasons. Although Massachusetts’s peak in 2015 was in June. We can conclude that Massachusetts and Iowa are rainy states and California is not, based on the data sets that have been shown earlier. In California, it would be very rare to rain in any season besides the winter.

References:

https://www.seattlecentral.edu/qelp/sets/050/050.html