Michelle Gierach has a passion for Earth Science. She serves as a project scientist for the Physical Oceanography Distributed Data Archive Center (PO.DAAC) and ocean scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Steve Nerem is the leader of NASA’s Sea Level Change team. His project, Observation-Driven Projections of Future Regional Sea Level Change, focuses on using NASA satellite and in situ observations and climate modeling to estimate future regional sea level change.

Check out this interview to learn more about Dr. Claire Parkinson's journey to become Senior Scientist researching Climate Change at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

This activity introduces students to aspects of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and litho/geosphere and how they are interrelated. It is designed to promote an interest in authentic investigations of Earth using images acquired by astronauts as the hook.

Since 1997 I have been the Physical Oceanography Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters AND I am a dedicated sea-going oceanographer.  It stills feels kind of crazy what comes around in life.  I write my short career biography here for students who may consider working in oceanography or for NASA or both.

Students discuss their current understanding of what Earth systems are and how they work and consider how to identify the boundaries of a region for Earth system study.

This NASA visualization shows sea surface salinity observations (September 2011-September 2014). Students review the video and answer questions.

This mini-lesson features time-series graphs of mean salinity at the surface for the Arctic and Antarctic regions. A series of questions guides students in their analysis.

In this mini lesson, students use in-water profiles of historical ocean data to analyze how sea surface salinity varies with depth. 

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.