Students analyze two North Pole orthographic data visualizations produced from soil moisture data. After describing trends in the seasonal thaw of land surfaces, students demonstrate their understanding of Earth’s energy budget by explaining relationships and make predictions about the dataset.

Christy Hansen is the project manager on an airborne campaign for Earth science called Operation IceBridge. IceBridge teams are all over the country. We have scientists, instrument managers, we have a data center, we have aircraft offices all over. This project flies up to nine different geophysical instruments installed on the aircraft to collect data on the changing ice sheets, the sea ice and the glaciers. 

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.

In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.