A kinesthetic activity that challenges students to participate in a model that describes the fate of solar energy as it enters the Earth system.  A good initial lesson for Earth’s energy budget, students unravel the benefits and limitations of their model.

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 review a visualization showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere longwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012. They review the supporting text and analyze the data in the visualization to answer questions.

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

Students consider the impact of changing conditions on the remote island of Little Diomede, Alaska after they investigate the relationship between seasonal trends in sea ice extent with shortwave and longwave radiation flux described in Earth’s energy budget.

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. 

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.

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.