The ocean's surface is not level, and sea levels change in response to changes in chemistry and temperature. Sophisticated satellite measurements are required for scientists to document current sea level rise.

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.

In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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

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

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

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.

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