In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.

Students analyze two North Pole orthographic data visualizations produced from soil moisture data. After describing trends in the seasonal thaw of land surfaces, students demonstrate their understanding of Earth’s energy budget by explaining relationships and make predictions about the dataset.

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

This series of videos highlights how NASA Climate Scientists use mathematics to solve everyday problems.  These educational videos to illustrate how math is used in satellite data analysis. 

In this activity, students use satellite images from the NASA Landsat team to quantify changes in glacier cover over time from 1986 to 2018. 

Students explore the spatial patterns observed in meteorological data and learn how this information is used to predict weather and understand climate behavior.

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

This activity invites students to simulate and observe the different effects on sea level from melting sea-ice.

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.