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.
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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.
Worldview is a valuable resource in understanding information about the atmosphere. Learn how to access models in order to answer your own 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.
Several heat domes have occurred over the last few summers and around the world. This lesson provides one example from 2021 in Portland, Oregon, with temperature and ozone data.
What is sea-level rise and how does it affect us? This "Teachable Moment" looks at the science behind sea-level rise and offers lessons and tools for teaching students about this important climate topic.
Students review Earth System phenomena that are affected by soil moisture. They analyze and evaluate maps of seasonal global surface air temperature and soil moisture data from NASA satellites. Building from their observations, students will select a location in the U.S.
In this interactive, students will observe the effects of albedo, clouds, aerosols, and greenhouse gases on Earth's Energy Budget and differentiate between the concepts of reflection and absorption.
In this interactive, students will identify the forms of energy we receive, analyze patterns in the amount of incoming solar radiation over time, and explain why some locations on Earth have greater variability in the amount of incoming solar radiation throughout a year.