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.

Students will examine a 2014-2015 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event to identify relationships among sea surface height, sea surface temperature, precipitation, and wind vectors.

The purpose of this lesson is for students to compare data displays to determine which best answers the driving question. To do this they will evaluate the spread of the data and what the displays show. 

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.

In this activity, learners will explore an additional tool used to observe the Sun’s atmosphere, called a coronagraph. Learners will create a flipbook of a coronagraph showing a coronal mass ejection.

Students watch videos and review articles related to ozone as a pollutant at ground level, and how ozone impacts environment, then provide their understanding in groups.

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.

Students will investigate the role of clouds and their contribution (if any) to global warming. Working in cooperative groups, students will make a claim about the future role clouds will play in Earth’s Energy Budget if temperatures continue to increase.

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.

Learners use a compass to trace magnetic field lines of a bar magnet. They observe a CME hitting Earth’s magnetosphere and compare its shape to the magnet. They then apply their understanding of magnetic fields to those found on the Sun.