My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, story maps, for use in educational settings.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
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.
This graphic organizer may be used to help students analyze the processes and components of Earth System phenomena.
Helping students build their understanding of Earth's spheres and how they are connected is difficult. Review the graphics to help identify the parts of the Earth System and the processes that connect them at the local, regional, and global scales.
The world's surface air temperature is getting warmer. Whether the cause is human activity or natural changes in the Earth System—and the enormous body of evidence says it’s humans—thermometer readings all around the world have risen steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Background information on sea level change.
Background information on sea and land ice melt.
Many of our archived lessons date back to as early as 2004 when our learning community first formed and unfortunately contain links to content that is no longer updated or exist.
The My NASA Data visualization tool, Earth System Data Explorer (ESDE), helps learners visualize complex Earth System data sets over space and time. Visit this page to review the datasets we have available to you and their organization by Earth System sphere, science variable, dataset name, and start/end dates.
An important scientific practice is the asking and refining of questions that lead to rich descriptions, explanations, and reasoning of how the natural and designed world works, as well as those investigations of variables that can be empirically tested.