Question: What's pattern spotting?

Lauren Burt answered on 6 Nov 2016:

Hi Again @ScienceCat!

Pattern spotting is something that scientists love to do.

Pattern spotting is:
– finding out why something happens
– how often it happens
– how long has it been happening
– how it might change over time.

The ‘something’ could be anything- and it is a scientists job to find out the answer.

One example from my job- the ‘something’ is a big storm!
We try to spot patterns by:
– finding out why a storm happens (usually caused by the weather)
– find out how often a storm happens (is it every week, or just in the winter?)
– find out how long storms have been happening somewhere (have they always happened here, or is this something new?)
– how will storms change in the future? Will they be bigger and stronger and make more damage?

I hope that helps!

Lauren 😀