Students will watch and examine a NASA animation of Earth’s rising surface temperatures over an almost 150 year period.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
Students use albedo values of common surfaces along with photographic images of Earth taken from the International Space Station to make an argument about specific anthropogenic activities that impact Earth’s albedo.
My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, story maps, for use in educational settings.
Students identify and classify kinds of land cover (such as vegetation, urban areas, water, and bare soil) in Landsat satellite images of Phoenix, Arizona taken in 1984 and 2018.
In Earth System Science, underling factors affecting observable phenomena can be difficult to identify and describe. The Iceberg Diagram diagram uses the metaphor of an iceberg to demonstrate the idea of visible vs hidden as it relates to Earth science phenomena. This teaching strategy helps students to see beyond the obvious and to develop their awareness of the underlying causes, relationships, and/or conditions that can contribute to phenomenological events. It also provides a framework for digging deeper into phenomena-driven lessons in Earth Science.
Students can interact with NASA data to build a custom visualizations of local, regional, or global plant growth patterns over time, using the Earth System Data Explorer to generate plots of satellite data as they develop models of this phenomenon.
Students will investigate the role of clouds and their contribution (if any) to global warming. Working in cooperative groups, students will make a claim about the future role clouds will play in Earth’s Energy Budget if temperatures continue to increase.
This unit plan is published by the NASA Climate Change Research Initiative's (CCRI) Applied Research STEM Curriculum Portfolio. The CCRI Unit Plan, called “Urban Surface Temperatures and the Urban Heat Island Effects,“ has the purpose to educate students how climate is changi