This investigation is part of the NASA: Mission Geography Module "What are the causes and consequences of climate change?" that guides students through explorations in climatic variability and evidence for global climate change. 

Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected. 

Students will analyze surface temperature and solar radiation data to construct explanations about the relationship of seasons and temperature to the amount of solar energy received on Earth’s surface.

Every day, scientists at NASA work on creating better hurricanes on a computer screen. At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a team of scientists spends its days incorporating millions of atmospheric observations. Sophisticated graphic tools and lines of computer code to create computer models simulating the weather and climate conditions responsible for hurricanes.

Ryan Turner says "My career has focused on software and software is ubiquitous, so I have been involved in many different projects. There is a lot of flexibility with software. I’ve worked on projects ranging from real-time displays of sounding rocket trajectories to enterprise messaging software tools for spacecraft operations centers." Read about the role of mentorship in his career.

Dr. Norman Loeb, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is the principal investigator for an experiment called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). CERES instruments measure how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much thermal energy is emitted by Earth to space.

To investigate the different rates of heating and cooling of certain materials on earth in order to understand the heating dynamics that take place in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Hurricanes are the most powerful weather event on Earth. NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

Students will analyze and interpret graphs to compare the flow of (shortwave) energy from the Sun toward China over the course of a year on cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw a conclusion and support it with evidence.

The extreme temperatures during July 2022 prompt students to investigate a model that displays historical heat wave frequency data to discover the importance of defining terms when interpreting data.