This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities.
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This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.
This learning activity uses data acquired by the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, a joint project of NASA and the French Space Agency, to investigate the relationship between the topography of a sea-floor feature and the topography of the overlying sea surface.
The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.
Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.
Students analyze the relationship between sea surface height and ocean surface currents by graphing sea height using satellite data. Note: This lesson is modified from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon lesson plan.