Students evaluate graphs and images of sea ice and relate them to changes in albedo. Students make a claim about the interaction of albedo and sea ice extent.
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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.
What is the atmosphere and why is it important?
Do you need tools to help using the Earth System Data Explorer? MND offers several ways to learn more about how to use this data visualization tool.
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.
The Cryosphere refers to any place on Earth where water is in its solid form, where low temperatures freeze water and turn it into ice. The frozen water can be in the form of solid ice or snow and occurs in many places around the Earth. People often think of the polar regions of our planet as the main home of the Cyrosphere; the North Pole in the Arctic, as well as the South Pole in the Antarctic. The cryosphere exists in the polar regions, but is also found wherever snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs exists. In these places, surface temperatures remain below freezing for a portion of each year.
Earth is made up of five major parts or subsystems: the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, and Geosphere. Each major part is connected to the other parts in a complex web of processes.
Students explore positive feedback effects of changing albedo from melting Arctic sea ice.
Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.
Students analyze map visualizations representing the amount of Sun’s energy received on the Earth as indicated by the amount that is reflected back to space, known as “albedo”.