This mini lesson focuses on the 2015-2016 El Niño event and how its weather conditions triggered regional disease outbreaks throughout the world. Students will review a NASA article and watch the associated video to use as a tool to compare with maps related to 2015-2016 rainfall and elevated disease risk, and answer the questions.
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Using an infographic, students describe differences in electromagnetic radiation that is part of a model of Earth’s energy budget by applying the defined terms of Shortwave Radiation and Longwave Radiation.
Students analyze four data visualizations focused on the topic of sea level. They use a jigsaw method to explore and communicate their findings to their peers.
Students review a video showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere shortwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012 and answer the questions that follow.
Students are divided into three different groups and are assigned a category of drivers of change in regional trends of freshwater storage (Climate Change, Human Activity, and Natural Variability).
Explore using units in calculations with the Leaf Area Index (LAI). LAI is a ratio that describes the number of square meters of leaves per square meter of available land surface. Because of the units in the ratio, it is dimensionless.
Explore using units for calculations with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). NDVI is a ratio of different light wavelength reflectance which can be used to map the density of green vegetation.
Students watch a short video to gather information about sources of methane emissions and then extend their understanding of these sources to evaluate monthly trends in the Alaska region, ultimately making connections to Earth’s energy budget.
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.
In this activity, students will use sea-level rise data to create models and compare short-term trends to long-term trends. They will then determine whether sea-level rise is occurring based on the data.