In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.
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This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.
In addition to the changes brought about by natural forces, it has recently become apparent that a relative newcomer to planet Earth — the human being — has become a powerful agent of environmental change.
What is El Nino or ENSO?
Background information on sea and land ice melt.
In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.
This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology.
To investigate the different rates of heating and cooling of certain materials on earth in order to understand the heating dynamics that take place in the Earth’s atmosphere.