Students will practice the process of making claims, collecting evidence to support claims, and applying scientific reasoning to connect evidence to claims.

Students use albedo values of common surfaces along with photographic images of Earth taken from the International Space Station to make an argument about specific anthropogenic activities that impact Earth’s 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 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.

Use the Earth System Data Explorer to analyze data and make a claim about which 2018 eruption was larger, Kilauea, HI or Ambae Island, Vanuatu.

This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.

Use the Data Literacy Cube to guide students’ exploration of mapped data of the Earth System to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of mapped images.  This activity requires a map of Earth data for students to evalu

Compare images from two volcanic eruptions in the Kuril Islands which occurred ten years apart and complete a graphic organizer for impacts on different Earth spheres. 

Hands-on demonstration of the El Niño Effect, trade winds, and upwelling provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

This learning activity uses data acquired by the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, a joint project of NASA and the French Space Agency, to investigate the relationship between the topography of a sea-floor feature and the topography of the overlying sea surface.