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.

Conduct this modified EO Kids mini-lesson with your students to explore the phenomenon of Urban Heat Island Effect.

Students watch a video and answer questions on Dr. Patrick Taylor (Atmospheric Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center) as he discusses the study of clouds and Earth's energy budget by analyzing data from Low Earth Orbit satellites. 

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

In this activity, students explore the Urban Heat Island Effect phenomenon by collecting temperatures of different materials with respect to their locations.  

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.

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.