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 how radiation, conduction, and convection work together as a part of Earth’s Energy Budget to heat the atmosphere.

Students will watch and examine a NASA animation of Earth’s rising surface temperatures over an almost 150 year period.

Students investigate the effects of Hurricane Sandy and make a scale model of the storm over the continental United States to assess the area of impact.

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. 

Learners will analyze and interpret a box plot and evaluate the spread of the data. Learners will compare it with a different visualization of the data to see how the two compare, discuss the limitations of the two types of data displays and formulate questions.

Students interpret a double bar/column chart comparing the number of tropical cyclones in different locations.

Interpret a scatter plot to find patterns in the number of tropical cyclones from 1842 to 2018.

Compare a histogram and map to determine the differences in the information conveyed in each data display.

This activity will help students better understand and practice estimating percent cloud cover.