The Earth System Satellite Images, along with the Data Literacy Cubes, help the learner visualize how different Earth system variables change over time, identify patterns, and determine relationships among two variables in three months.

Students review Earth System phenomena that are affected by soil moisture.  They analyze and evaluate maps of seasonal global surface air temperature and soil moisture data from NASA satellites. Building from their observations, students will select a location in the U.S.

Students observe the surface temperatures of a variety of surface types found in a suburban environment.

For over 20 years, satellite instruments have measured the sea surface height of our ever-changing oceans.  This video of images shows the complicated patterns of rising and falling ocean levels across the globe from 1993 to 2015.

Students observe seasonal images of Monthly Leaf Area, looking for any changes that are occurring throughout the year.

Students will analyze the mapped plot of the historic Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations at key locations around the world for the period of 1998-2018.

In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The extreme temperatures during July 2022 prompt students to investigate a model that displays historical heat wave frequency data to discover the importance of defining terms when interpreting data.

The Earth System Poster activity walks learners through global patterns and illuminates how each of the spheres is interconnected across the world. We will divide into small groups to look at maps of different parts of the earth system that have been observed by NASA satellites.

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.