Students will investigate the role of clouds and their contribution (if any) to global warming. Working in cooperative groups, students will make a claim about the future role clouds will play in Earth’s Energy Budget if temperatures continue to increase.

In this mini lesson, students analyze a bar graph showing the relative forcings from natural and human factors that affect Earth's climate. They use information from this graph to assess the relative importance of these factors.

Students watch a video explaining albedo and its impact on Earth. The video shows visualizations of albedo across Earth and how it can change. Students will interpret the images in the video and answer questions about albedo.

Students will engage in a collaborative learning routine as they explore slides that show how the development of public transportation infrastructure changed the land in Woodlawn, Maryland. They will make observations of a satellite image and a photo from the ground as well as read background information on the impact of urbanization. 

Students compare climographs for two locations to determine the most likely months to expect the emergence of mosquitoes in each location.

Students analyze the stability and change of sea level after watching a visualization of sea level height around the world. 

This mini lesson engages students in watching a NASA video related to accumulated dust that makes the trans-Atlantic journey from the Sahara Desert to the Amazon rainforest using NASA's CALIPSO satellite. Students will examine a model and answer questions related to dust transport and the introduction of phosphorus to the soils of the Amazon.

Students analyze a graph that illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures.

This mini lesson engages students in writing a commentary for a NASA video regarding changes in global temperatures from 1880 to 2017. 

Students will analyze the monthly seasonal chlorophyll concentration images in our global oceans for the four different months of 2024, and then answer the following questions.