This investigation is part of the NASA: Mission Geography Module "What are the causes and consequences of climate change?" that guides students through explorations in climatic variability and evidence for global climate change.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
Because it recognizes the importance of U.S. coastal areas to the nation's economy, the U.S. National Ocean Service has formed a task force that is studying the trends and impacts of hurricanes on coastal regions. They have invited your students to participate.
Earth is a system of systems.
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 mini lesson, students use in-water profiles of historical ocean data to analyze how sea surface salinity varies with depth.
This mini-lesson features time-series graphs of mean salinity at the surface for the Arctic and Antarctic regions. A series of questions guides students in their analysis.
Phytoplankton distribution background information.
Background information on soil moisture.
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.