This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to plant growth activity around the world using data from the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP satellite and answering questions on these stability and change relationships.

Students watch the video Frozen Earth and answer the following questions that discuss how ice helps moderate the planet's temperature using NASA satellites.

Students will analyze a graph showing the variation of energy imbalance on Earth over the year along different latitudinal zones and answer the questions that follow.

Students review a video showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere shortwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012 and answer the questions that follow.

Explore using units for calculations with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). NDVI is a ratio of different light wavelength reflectance which can be used to map the density of green vegetation.

This lesson contains a card sort activity that challenges students to predict relative albedo values of common surfaces.