In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.
List of all Hydrosphere Lesson Plans
![all grade icon](../themes/mynasadata_theme/img/all.png)
![elementary grade icon](../themes/mynasadata_theme/img/elem.png)
![middle grade icon](../themes/mynasadata_theme/img/middle.png)
![high grade icon](../themes/mynasadata_theme/img/high.png)
This activity invites students to simulate and observe the different effects on sea level from melting sea-ice.
This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.
This activity was developed by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) team as an introductory experience to a series of lessons about water resources on Earth.
Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective
In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.
This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.
In this lesson, students investigate and identify various phytoplankton using images that were previously taken with a compound microscope. Credit: This lesson is modified from a lesson of the same name created by The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education 
Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology.
In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents. This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.