Students watch a video explaining albedo and its impact on Earth. The video shows visualizations of albedo across Earth and how it can change. Students will interpret the images in the video and answer questions about albedo.

Students will learn about and describe the different classifications of Air Quality Index and the importance of standards in air quality monitoring. Students will also use scientific evidence and reasoning to support a claim about long-term trends in air quality in the United States.  

Students will review the sources of the six criteria pollutants for which the EPA has established standards for and describe their impacts on human health and the environment. 

Students will analyze how air pollution may be transported over time. Students will also differentiate between sources of air pollution and describe how air pollution interacts with the Earth System. 

Using hourly graphs of PM 2.5 data and HYSPLIT model trajectories, students will collect evidence for the effects of fireworks on air quality.

Students differentiate between data sets of monthly shortwave radiation and monthly cloud coverage to discover a relationship between radiation and clouds by answering analysis questions.

Worldview is a valuable resource in understanding information about the atmosphere. Learn how to access models in order to answer your own questions.

Students will watch a short video that explains albedo and how it plays an important role in Earth’s Energy Budget. Applying what they learned from the video, students will analyze a bar graph that lists the albedos of common surfaces found on Earth to answer critical thinking questions.

This lesson uses the National Park Service Story Map which displays national parks around the contiguous United States and their standard exceedance ozone concentrations from 2016-2021. Students will explore ozone levels and answer questions.