Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected. 

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

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.

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

Students use albedo values of common surfaces along with photographic images of Earth taken from the International Space Station to make an argument about specific anthropogenic activities that impact Earth’s albedo.

My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, StoryMaps, for use in educational settings.

This StoryMap allows students to explore the urban heat island effect using land surface temperature and vegetation data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students investigate the processes that create differences in surface temperatures, as well as how human activities have led to the creation of urban heat islands. 

Use the Earth System Data Explorer to analyze data and make a claim about which 2018 eruption was larger, Kilauea, HI or Ambae Island, Vanuatu.

Students will use coloring sheets to create a color coded model of El Niño and analyze it. If the Data Literacy Map Cube is used with this, students will color their models first.

This investigation is part of the NASA: Mission Geography Module "What are the causes and consequences of climate change?" that guides students through explorations in climatic variability and evidence for global climate change.