What’s the weather like?
Answer to a question
Based on the data using Python
Background
All the problems starts from a question and it’s essential to know how to answer a question based on the data we’ve found.
Q. What’s the weather like as we approach the equator?
You may think the given question is too obvious but can you prove it?
Objective
The objective is to build a series of scatter plots to showcase the following relationships:
Summary: Latitude vs. X
The purpose of this project was to analyze how weather changes as you get closer to the equator. To accomplish this analysis, we first pulled data from the OpenWeatherMap API to assemble a dataset on over 500 cities.
After Assembling the dataset, we used Matplotlib to plot various aspects of the weather vs. latitude. Factors we looked at included: temperature, cloudiness, wind speed, and humidity.
City Latitude vs. Max Temperature
As expected, the weather becomes significantly warmer as one approaches the equator (0 Deg. Latitude). More interestingly, however, is the fact that the southern hemisphere tends to be warmer this time of year than the northern hemisphere. This may be due to the tilt of the earth at the time of the year this data was gathered.
City Latitude vs. Humidity
It doesn't show any particular trend in humidity analysis. Many cities have higher humidity at the time this data was gathered. According to Wikipedia, the most humid cities on earth are generally located closer to the equator, near coastal regions. Cities in South and Southeast Asia are among the most humid all year round because of their proximity to water bodies and the equator and often overcast weather.
City Latitude vs. Cloudiness
The data supports NASA. According to NASA, clouds also tend to form in abundance in the middle latitudes 60 degrees north and south of the equator. It is because air descends between about 15 and 30 degrees north and south of the equator, clouds are rare and deserts are common at this latitude.
City Latitude vs. Wind Speed
No correlation is found between the equator and wind speed. Wind is the flow of air that occurs as it is heated by the sun and thus rises, so it depends on the temperature which is subject to change time to time.
Dataset is trustworthy?
OpenWeatherMap
We used Python requests, simple and clear API, and JSON traversals
CitiPy Library
We randomly select over 250 unique cities based on their latitude and perform a weather check using API calls
“Garbage In Garbage Out”
To be a data analyst, I’ve learned a basic statistics and data analytic process
from data wrangling with Python to database exploration with MySQL.
Data analytics is powerful but only if we have the right tool for the job.
I feel so much accomplished and ready to explore more data!
Thanks!
Presenter:
Emma Kong
California, US
“I learn everyday”
bobaekong@gmail.com
@Emma Kong (Slack)