This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

To investigate the different rates of heating and cooling of certain materials on earth in order to understand the heating dynamics that take place in the Earth’s atmosphere.

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

In this interactive, students will observe the effects of albedo, clouds, aerosols, and greenhouse gases on Earth's Energy Budget and differentiate between the concepts of reflection and absorption. 

In this interactive, students will identify the forms of energy we receive, analyze patterns in the amount of incoming solar radiation over time, and explain why some locations on Earth have greater variability in the amount of incoming solar radiation throughout a year.

In this interactive, students will identify and describe the different components and flows of energy of the Earth's Energy Budget diagram as well as the imbalances that exist in Earth's Energy Budget.

Students can interact with NASA data to build a custom visualizations of local, regional, or global plant growth patterns over time, using the Earth System Data Explorer to generate plots of satellite data as they develop models of this phenomenon.

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