In this activity, students use satellite images from the NASA Landsat team to quantify changes in glacier cover over time from 1986 to 2018. 

The advance-and-retreat cycle of snow cover drastically changes the whiteness and brightness of Earth. Using two maps created using NASA satellite data for 2017, students review the seasonal differences of snow and ice extent and answer questions on their observations.

Teachers, are you looking for resources to help you engage students in data analysis related to changes in the cryosphere using albedo values? Check out these images. 

The Earth System Satellite Images help students observe and analyze global Earth and environmental data, understand the relationship among different environmental variables, and explore how the data change seasonally and over longer timescales.  

Students watch a NOVA PBS video about the different effects of clouds on climate and Earth's energy budget. Then they answer questions and brainstorm to complete a flow chart of events that might occur if the percentage of absorbing clouds increases.

Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.

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.

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 contains a card sort activity that challenges students to predict relative albedo values of common surfaces. 

Students explore positive feedback effects of changing albedo from melting Arctic sea ice.