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Science
Raining again?! You've probably asked yourself this question in Copenhagen, and you're not the only one. Two scientists set out to find out exactly how much it actually rains – and the answer will surprise you: In the Greater Copenhagen area, you have dry weather 94 per cent of the time.
»If you bike to work every day, you will, statistically, only bike in the rain one day a month, while the rest of the time you will be riding in the dry.«
This is according to Ole Fryd, an associate professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). He set out with associate Professor Roland Löwe of Technical University of Denmark (DTU) to find out how often it actually rains in Denmark at the request of their students.
The result is surprising. In Greater Copenhagen, there is only a six per cent risk of being hit by rain. 94 per cent of the time it is dry weather.
FACTS
Roland Löwe and Ole Fryd have analyzed observations from 35 measuring stations in the Copenhagen region over a six-year period. The stations are run by the rain metering network Spildevandskomiteen.
Ole Fryd is an urban planner, a PhD, and an associate professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen.
Roland Löwe is a hydrologist, a PhD, and an associate professor at the Department of Environmental and Resource engineering at DTU.
The two colleagues (and friends) analysed six years of rain meter data from 35 official measuring stations in Greater Copenhagen, and the numbers show major geographical differences.
This means that there is a big difference between whether you bike in to South Campus from northern Copenhagen, or whether you ride in from the western Ishøj suburb to North Campus:
»Our analysis indicates that there is a 25 per cent higher probability that it will rain on you in the northern Hellerup and Gentofte suburbs than if you are in the western suburbs,« says Roland Löwe from DTU in a press release from the Faculty of Science.
There are four times as much risk of getting wet in October than in April. And in addition to the season, the time of day also has an impact on the amount of water:
»You need to get up early if you want to be get to campus dry. It is better to get there at 8 than at 9 am and to leave at 3 rather than 4 pm,« says Roland Löwe.
Another statistic, in other words, that favours early birds over late starters.
The two associate professor friends crunched the numbers on a bus on their way back from Jutland, and they base their findings on a relatively quick analysis, and no specific research project:
»This was mostly for fun, and clearly you can do a much more thorough analysis that spans over a longer number of years and which is perhaps even more precise. But this is a good, rough idea of what the overall rain patterns in Copenhagen look like,« says Roland Löwe.