Climate data analysis

Our atmosphere and climate 2020 atmosphereOur atmosphere and climate 2020 climateOur atmosphere and climate 2020 is an environmental report produced by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ. The report uses extensive long-term datasets to demonstrate some of the observed physical changes and broadscale effects in New Zealand that have been caused by climate change. Stats NZ makes these datasets available to the public. This activity uses Google Data Studio to enable students to visualise and filter datasets of interest.

There are 27 datasets to choose from:

• 15 datasets pertaining to weather including temperature, rainfall, drought, growing days, frosts, winds and fire risks. The datasets provide 30+ years of weather data for 30 locations across New Zealand.

• 11 datasets pertaining to greenhouse gas concentration emissions. The datasets cover emissions from 1990–2016. The initial dataset covers broad categories – energy, industry, agriculture, land use and waste. Subsequent datasets become narrower and more refined.

• 1 dataset pertaining to atmospheric ozone.

Update

The Data Studio pages are currently not working, but we are working on a fix for this.

Email us if you'd like to be notified when they are working again.

Ministry for the Environment data can still be accessed here.

Please note: the Data Studio pages contain extensive information – there may be short delays while navigating through the pages and datasets.

Curriculum applications

The purpose of the activity is to introduce students to the datasets using an inquiry-based approach. This has applications across multiple curriculum areas. For example:

• agricultural and horticultural sciences

• Earth systems and the carbon cycle

• human impacts on ecosystems

• statistical investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle

• investigating impacts on health, wellbeing and/or the economy.

Videos

The following videos introduce the New Zealand climate data analysis datasets and explain how to filter, visualise and explore data.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• discuss components of selected Data Studio pages

• discuss and interpret data presented in selected pages

• discuss why the information is important

• ask questions about data of interest

• consider how the data can be used to inform people about changes in New Zealand’s climate and the effects we are beginning to see

• consider how the data can be used to inform people about New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Download the Word file for additional teaching support and student worksheet (see link below).