The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.

 Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.

In this activity, students will analyze a NASA sea surface height model of El Niño for December 27, 2015, and answer questions. Then they will be instructed to create a model of their own made from pudding to reflect the layers of El Niño.

This lesson walks students through the use of Landsat false-color imagery and identification of different land cover features using these as models.

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.

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.