Precipitation varies naturally and with human-caused climate changes, and we are interested in the range of these changes. We use data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) archive, which contains precipitation and energy flux data from 1850 to 2100 from climate model simulations. The comparison of model data from past years with the observed climate record can be used to test the simulations. We use matlab to calculate the mean of precipitation and energy fluxes of each model in CMIP5. The precipitation differences are interpreted with the energy budget. While the precipitation clearly increases in 21st century, there is model-to-model differences over the 20th century. The 20th century differences may be caused by different strengths of aerosol effects related to the second industrial revolution during that period. We will continue data analysis to find the reason for the differences in model predictions over both the 20th and 21st centuries. The differences in the comparision are helpful for validation of the prediction of precipitation in the future and to show the effect of global warming.

The effect of evaporative cooling is a common experience that people can relate to. For example Sweat cools us as a result of evaporative cooling. However latent heat is released when liquid water condenses. This transition from gas to liquid brings with it a large amount of energy. This effect is important because it implies that heat is transferred to objects more readily in humid environments. I ran a series of experiments demonstrating this effect. For example, liquid in a soda can will heat almost twice as much in a humid environment as compared to a dry environment at the same temperature.