Students explore albedo, sea ice, and the relationship between changing albedo and changing sea ice using data visualizations.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
This mini lesson helps students visualize how the Hydrosphere and Cryosphere interact to produce changes in land and sea ice.
Students will use the NASA Earth Observations analysis tool to explore changing albedo in the Arctic compared with other areas of Earth.
Arctic sea ice is the cap of frozen seawater blanketing most of the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas in wintertime. It follows seasonal patterns of thickening and melting. Students view how the quantity has changed from 1979 through 2018.
Students examine the two time series images to determine the differences between seasonal ice melt over water versus land.
Students learn how to estimate the "energy efficiency" of photosynthesis, or the amount of energy that plants absorb for any given location on Earth. This is the ratio of the amount of energy stored to the amount of light energy absorbed and is used to evaluate and model photosynthesis efficiency.
The Earth System Satellite Images help students observe and analyze global Earth and environmental data, understand the relationship among different environmental variables, and explore how the data change seasonally and over longer timescales.