How Does Elevation Affect Temperature?

Introduction
Climate is the average temperature and weather of a region over a long span of time.
One factor that affects climate is elevation. How does change in elevation affect temperature?
If the elevation increases then the temperature will decrease because for every kilometer above
sea level the temperature decreases by 6.5 degrees Celsius generally making the climate
colder.
Methods
After opening the website WWW.mysciencelearning.org and selecting Spokane
and Seattle Washington to be compared for average temperature annually. These two
cities are the ideal locations to observe how elevation affects climate because Seattle is
a coastal city where the elevation averages at sea level. Where as in Spokane is
located in the Rocky Mountains and the elevation is 720 meters above sea level. Once
the two cities were selected then a graph of the two cities average temperature between
December 1 2005 and December 1 2006. The temperature of the two cities over the
span over one year was collected by NWS by recording the temperature of the cities
every day for one year.
Results
Based on the data acquired from the graph Seattle WA had higher average
temperature then Spokane WA. Even though Seattle had a warmer average
temperature the margin between Seattle and Spokane is not very great. Especially due
to the fact that Spokane had an anomaly from June through August 2006. During this
time period the average temperature of Spokane surpassed the average temperature of
Seattle during the same time. Overall Seattle Washington had the higher average
temperature because the city is sea level where as Spokane is seven hundred-twenty
meter above sea level and the higher the above sea level the colder the climate.
Scientific Discussion
If the elevation increases then the temperature will decrease. After conducting
the experiment and collecting valuable data the hypothesis was supported because the
average temperature of sea level city Seattle WA was greater than 720 meter elevated
Spokane WA. This is because for every kilometer traveled above sea level the
temperature drops 6.5 degrees Celsius. This happens because when elevation
increases there is less of the troposphere covering the environment causing it to be
colder due to less heat retention. Therefore higher elevated places are generally
colder. Errors that took place in this experiment include the fact that the data that was
used was only the span of one year. Leaving a possibility that one or both of the cities
had a temperature anomaly. Maybe one city is typically colder? Or one typically
warmer? To resolve this error in this experiment is by using data over the span of
several consecutive years rather than one year alone.