Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

This StoryMap lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data. Students will investigate the forces that contribute to ocean circulation patterns, and how debris, especially plastics, travel from land to the garbage patches. 

Students identify patterns in chlorophyll concentration data to formulate their explanations of phytoplankton distribution. 

This NASA visualization shows sea surface salinity observations (September 2011-September 2014). Students review the video and answer questions.

This activity was developed by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) team as an introductory experience to a series of lessons about water resources on Earth.

Exploring salinity patterns is a great way to better understand the relationships between the water cycle, ocean circulation, and climate. In this mini lesson, students analyze sea surface salinity mapped plots created from the Earth System Data Explorer, paired with questions (and answers) from the Aquarius Mission. Credit: Aquarius Education

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities. 

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.

Students analyze and compare satellite data of Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations with Sea Surface Temperatures, beginning with the North Atlantic region, while answering questions about the global patterns of these phenomenon.

In this activity, students will use sea-level rise data to create models and compare short-term trends to long-term trends. They will then determine whether sea-level rise is occurring based on the data.