Comparing Temperature & Solar Radiation for Common Latitudes

Overview

Examine (daytime) surface temperature and solar radiation received at locations found near similar latitudes using NASA Data.

Materials Required

Per Student:

Virtual Teachers:  Select the form or doc to serve as the Student Sheet. Make a copy of the Google product so that you may assign it directly from your Google Drive into your Learning Management System (e.g., Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, etc.).  Do you need help incorporating these Google Forms into your Learning Management System?  If so, read this  Guide to Using Google Forms with My NASA Data.

Per Group of 2 Students:

Advanced Preparations:

• Print out the two sets Student Resource Cards for each student group (or distribute to students in content management system (e.g., Google Classroom):

1. Monthly Flow of Energy into Earth’s Surface by Solar (Shortwave) Radiation (W/m²)
2. Monthly Surface Skin Temperature (Celsius)

• Write the following locations on the board, if face to face (or display the Google Slide showing the following locations).

• Miami, Florida
• Leon, Spain
• Tokyo, Japan
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Graben, Switzerland
• Asyut, Egypt
• Detroit, Michigan
• Missoula, Montana

Procedure

1. Set the stage for the lesson by showing NASA’s Monthly Daytime Land-Surface Temperature video and ask students to make observations.  Have students describe what they see. Generate a list of questions that students have about this.

Monthly daytime land-surface temperatures from February 2000 to 2013 using thermal infrared measurements made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. Credit: NASA

2. Explain that this visualization shows monthly daytime land-surface temperatures from February 2000 to 2013 using thermal infrared measurements made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The measurements shown here represent the temperature of the "skin" (or top 1 millimeter) of the land surface during the daytime—including bare land, snow or ice cover, and cropland or forest canopy—and should not be confused with surface air temperature measurements that are given in a typical weather report. Yellow shows the warmest temperatures (up to 45 degrees Celsius) and light blue shows the coldest temperatures (down to -25 degrees Celsius). Black means no data.

3. Explain to students that they will be analyzing line graphs for two science variables: Incoming Solar Radiation (Insolation) and Surface Skin Temperature.  Write these terms on the board. 

4. Distribute the Monthly Flow of Energy into Earth’s Surface by Solar (Shortwave) Radiation (W/m²) cards.  Take one card to model how to observe the information on the card.  

1. Bring students attention to the Title, Location, X and Y Axes units.  Have students re-read the Title to infer the Label of the axes. Students may write in the labels by the X and Y on the cards.
2. Guide students to make observations about the cards and attempt to put these in an arrangement that makes sense to your team.  Be prepared to defend your arrangement using evidence from the cards and reasoning.

3. Explain Solar Insolation.  These graphs show where and how much sunlight fell on Earth's surface during the time period indicated. The values represent the Watts (a unit of energy flow - Joules per second) that strike over a 1-meter by 1-meter area, averaged over one month. Scientists call this measure solar insolation. Energy from the Sun warms the surface, creating updrafts of air that carry warmth and moisture up into the atmosphere. Knowing the rate of sunlight reaching the surface helps scientists understand weather and climate patterns. Exposure to sunlight is also a key limit to plant growth, particularly in tropical rainforests. Thus, insolation maps are also useful to scientists studying plant growth patterns in different parts of the world. Solar insolation graphs and maps are also useful to engineers who design solar panels and batteries designed to convert energy from the Sun into electricity to power appliances in our homes and workplaces.

5. Tell students that there are four pairs of cards. Now have students analyze all of the Monthly Flow of Energy into Earth’s Surface by Solar (Shortwave) Radiation (W/m²) cards and look for the cards that they believe are similar pairs.  (Tips: This can be as open-ended as you like. Students may sort by latitude, longitude, urban, rural, suburban, graphed signatures for maximum and minimum values, etc.)  

1. Distribute a Student Sheet and the C-E-R Rubric to each student.  Review these with the class.  (NOTE: Review Introduction:  Building Claims from Evidence before the beginning of the lesson to maximize understanding.)
   

2. Review the Claim Statement on their Data Sheet and how it needs to connect the phenomenon of insolation with surface temperature.

3. Review the kinds of evidence that students will want to collect.  (Possible questions guiding their observations may include: How does the amount of solar radiation/temperature at each location compare? What is the detectable pattern in the graph?

4. Encourage students to connect science concepts to our evidence as possible explanations (or reasoning). (Questions may include: What explanation can you give for this pattern? What science principle supports this evidence? etc.)

6.  After students get to explore their data, have students arrange the cards by latitude coordinates. These are the imaginary lines on a map that help us identify how far north or south a place is from the equator. Reported as 0-90° North and 0-90° South.

7.  Next, direct students to analyze their paired graphs and answer the following questions: How does the amount of solar radiation at each location compare? What is the detectable pattern in the graph? What explanation can you give for this pattern? Based on your solar radiation graph, what would you expect the temperature graph to say?

8.  Repeat this process for Surface “Skin” Temperature cards. Explain that this second graph compares the monthly average surface skin temperature at each location. Surface Skin Temperatures are quantitative observations made by remote sensing instruments on satellites that provide the temperature of the topmost layer of the ground.  This added value provide information about the land’s surface such as its radiative properties.

9.  Have students analyze their paired surface temperature graphs and answer the following questions: How do the temperatures compare between the locations? What is the detectable pattern in the graph? What explanation can you give for this pattern?

1. Have students select one pair of cards to examine and begin observing. 

   1. Students should have found that both locations receive nearly identical amounts of solar radiation. However, their temperatures differ and can do so dramatically. What explanation can you give for this data?
   2. What other variables, besides solar radiation, can you identify as possibly having an effect on surface temperature?

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