Mini project for BCEE 231 (Section V)

Deadline: Monday, April 15, 2024 @ 5:00 PM

• The submission should be made to tutors in the form of ONE hardcopy. Tutors will not
mark any submission that is not submitted as hardcopy.
• The submission should include both computer programs (along with any related
functions) and the outputs of the programs.

Project topic: statistical analyses of temperature data in Canada

A step-by-step guideline is provided immediately after the following questions.

1- On the first page of your submission write in BOLD the latitude and longitude of the grid
assigned to you. You find this information (i.e., your grid) in the PDF file titled “Students-
Grids” on Moodle.
2- Download the data matrix (.mat file). The first two columns are longitudes and latitudes,
respectively. Select the row which includes the data of the grid assigned to you. Columns
4 onward (i.e., column 4 to column 15344) include the daily mean temperature (in degree
Celsius data) from 1975-01-01 to 2016-12-31.
3- Using the daily mean temperature data, extract mean monthly temperature, extreme
minimum monthly temperature (the daily temperature in the coldest day of the month),
and extreme maximum monthly temperature (the daily temperature of the hottest day
of the month). What is the coldest and hottest temperature values in the whole data
period and the days they occurred (10%)?
4- Plot the timeseries for the three variables you extracted in part 3. Give appropriate title
and label to each figure (10%).
5- Divide each of the timeseries into 12 separate series related to each Julian month (all
Januaries together, all Februaries together and so on). Create a table that includes the
statistical information (min, mean, median, mode, max, std) of the data in each Julian
month (40%).
6- Fit a line to each monthly timeseries. Plot the data along with the fitted line. Based on the
slope of the line, decide whether the data in each month show an increasing or decreasing
trend, or have no change in time. Based on your analyses, discuss how the climate is
changing in the location you are studying (40%).

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Guidelines
This project resembles standard climate data analyses that will be used for variety of civil,
building and environmental engineering applications. The procedure from step 4 onward is
replicated below for the city of Montreal.
• To plot monthly timeseries of minimum, mean and maximum monthly temperature
values, use the similar application of the subplot function as shown below for Montreal.

• Ideally your table should look like this. The following table is related to Montreal.
Variable Month min mean median mode max std
Jan -11.60 -5.38 -5.20 -6.10 0.80 2.83
Feb -10.40 -3.93 -3.60 -3.20 2.70 2.44
Mar -1.70 2.17 1.70 0.80 8.80 2.33
Apr 6.20 10.93 11.00 10.40 15.00 1.89
May 14.30 18.81 18.80 16.70 23.40 2.10
Jun 20.90 23.75 23.80 23.80 26.80 1.31
Mean T
Jul 23.40 26.33 26.35 26.10 29.80 1.18
Aug 22.20 25.18 25.20 23.50 28.50 1.44
Sep 17.70 20.48 20.25 19.70 25.10 1.75
Oct 10.20 13.36 13.10 10.80 18.30 1.73
Nov 2.60 5.64 5.50 5.20 9.80 1.73
Dec -10.90 -2.18 -2.10 -2.80 4.60 2.82
Jan -2.30 6.55 6.70 6.70 13.90 3.21
Feb -3.60 6.06 6.10 5.00 15.00 2.96
Mar 4.80 13.08 12.40 10.00 25.80 4.84
Apr 15.60 22.79 22.80 20.00 30.00 3.50
May 22.90 28.42 28.30 29.40 34.70 2.47
Jun 27.10 31.16 31.20 30.00 35.00 1.77
ExtMax T
Jul 28.30 32.16 32.25 31.70 35.60 1.62
Aug 27.80 31.28 31.20 31.70 37.60 2.10
Sep 24.40 28.64 28.30 27.80 33.50 2.38
Oct 15.80 23.14 23.30 23.30 28.30 2.40
Nov 7.80 16.37 17.10 14.40 21.70 2.79
Dec 2.20 8.81 8.90 3.90 18.00 3.77
Jan -37.80 -26.38 -26.70 -28.30 -16.80 3.44
Feb -33.90 -24.85 -25.00 -26.10 -15.70 4.10
Mar -29.40 -18.10 -17.80 -20.60 -7.80 4.69
Apr -15.00 -6.67 -6.30 -8.30 0.10 3.07
May -4.40 0.49 0.60 2.20 4.70 1.98
Jun 0.00 5.81 5.85 5.00 9.80 2.23
ExtMin T
Jul 6.10 9.84 10.00 10.00 13.30 1.62
Aug 3.30 7.74 7.75 7.20 12.00 1.85
Sep -2.20 2.05 1.70 3.90 9.70 2.42
Oct -7.20 -3.55 -3.70 -5.60 1.50 1.78
Nov -19.40 -10.77 -10.30 -8.90 -3.30 3.25
Dec -32.40 -22.38 -22.10 -28.30 -12.10 4.26

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• Following descriptions briefly outlines how part 5 should be handled.
1) To fit a linear fit to the data using polyfit function in MATLAB
2) You need to plot the data and fitted lines related to each variable in a separate figures
and plot different months as subplots. The following figures show how the plots
should look like for variables in Montreal.

Mean T:

ExtMax T:

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 ExtMin T:

3) The following table shows the slope of the fitted line for each variable and in each
month. The fitted lines are obtained by polyfit and shown in above figures. To analyze
the climate change in your city you can create a similar table for your variables of
interest. If the slope is below 0, it means decreasing with time. If it is above 0 means
that it is increasing with time. If it is 0, it means that the variable is not changing with
time. Do not underestimate discussing your results.

Month Mean T ExtMax T ExtMin T

Jan 0.01 0.01 0.02
Feb 0.01 0.01 0.07
Mar 0.01 0.03 -0.01
Apr 0.02 0.03 0.01
May 0.02 0.03 0.03
Jun 0.00 -0.01 0.02
Jul 0.00 0.00 0.02
Aug 0.01 0.00 0.03
Sep 0.02 0.01 0.05
Oct -0.01 -0.01 0.00
Nov 0.01 0.03 0.01
Dec 0.04 0.03 0.07