After learning about the different characteristics of satellite data, students will describe the advantages and disadvantages of using two different satellites to study the Urban Heat Island Effect.  

Students will identify and describe the relationship between land cover classification and surface temperature as they relate to the urban heat island effect. Students will also describe patterns between population density and the locations of urban heat islands. 

Students will analyze how surface (skin) temperatures vary across a community and determine what factors contribute to this variation. Students will describe how human activity can affect the local environment. 

This StoryMap allows students to explore the urban heat island effect using land surface temperature and vegetation data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students investigate the processes that create differences in surface temperatures, as well as how human activities have led to the creation of urban heat islands. 

Be a Scientist: The GLOBE Program encourages you to use GLOBE data to help answer questions about how the environment works.  Through research projects, you can answer your own science questions by creating hypotheses, analyzing data, drawing conclusions, and sharing your results.  Scientific projects that you conduct and that include the use of GLOBE data or protocols can be submitted by your teacher for publication on this GLOBE website. By sharing your findings with the rest of the world you are completing the scientific process.

Students analyze Landsat images of Atlanta, Georgia to explore the relationship between surface temperature and vegetation.

In this activity students will make observations about the objects, size, distance, and motion of the Sun, Earth, and Moon during a solar eclipse.

Atmospheric scientists study the weather and climate and examine how those conditions affect human activity and the earth in general. Most atmospheric scientists work indoors in weather stations, offices, or laboratories. Occasionally, they do fieldwork, which means working outdoors to examine the weather. Some atmospheric scientists may have to work extended hours during weather emergencies.

Students will examine air temperature data collected through The GLOBE Program during the 2017 US solar eclipse.

Meet Jim Crawford, lead project scientist in atmospheric chemistry from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.