The advance-and-retreat cycle of snow cover drastically changes the whiteness and brightness of Earth. Using two maps created using NASA satellite data for 2017, students review the seasonal differences of snow and ice extent and answer questions on their observations.

How much do you know about the frozen poles of our home planet?

Students are divided into three different groups and are assigned a category of drivers of change in regional trends of freshwater storage (Climate Change, Human Activity, and Natural Variability).

Use the Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of data to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of graphical representations of data.  This activity requires a graph for students to evaluate. 

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.

Information from satellites if often used to display information about objects. This information can include how things appear, as well as their contents. Explore how pixel data sequences can be used to create an image and interpret it.