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.

Students differentiate between data sets of monthly shortwave radiation and monthly cloud coverage to discover a relationship between radiation and clouds by answering analysis questions.

Students consider the impact of changing conditions on the remote island of Little Diomede, Alaska after they investigate the relationship between seasonal trends in sea ice extent with shortwave and longwave radiation flux described in Earth’s energy budget.

Using a “fun-size” bag of rainbow bite-sized candies learners will place different colored candies on a diagram of the Sun-Earth system to show different space weather conditions during solar minimum and solar maximum.

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.

Learners will build a 2D model of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Spacecraft model. 

This lesson contains a card sort activity that challenges students to predict relative albedo values of common surfaces. 

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.

Students watch a video explaining albedo and its impact on Earth. The video shows visualizations of albedo across Earth and how it can change. Students will interpret the images in the video and answer questions about albedo.

Students will watch a short video that explains albedo and how it plays an important role in Earth’s Energy Budget. Applying what they learned from the video, students will analyze a bar graph that lists the albedos of common surfaces found on Earth to answer critical thinking questions.