In this activity, students explore three indicators of drought are: soil moisture, lack of precipitation, and decreased streamflows. Students investigate each of these parameters develop a sense for the effects of drought on land.

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.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Mosquito protocol bundle. 

Students watch a visualization video and answer questions on the potential of increasing megadroughts in the southwest and central United States from 1950-2095 using models created by soil moisture data.

Students analyze the stability and change of sea level after watching a visualization of sea level height around the world. 

Elizabeth Forsbacka is an instrument manager. She leads a diverse team to design, build and test Earth or space science instruments. She says "My job is to build a good team that can do it all. Our work from design through delivery of the spacecraft usually takes about four years." See what it's like to work on this sort of project.

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.

Students review Earth System phenomena that are affected by soil moisture.  They analyze and evaluate maps of seasonal global surface air temperature and soil moisture data from NASA satellites. Building from their observations, students will select a location in the U.S.