Students review a video showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere shortwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012 and answer the questions that follow.

Students review a visualization showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere longwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012. They review the supporting text and analyze the data in the visualization to answer questions.

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.

Space weather refers to the conditions of the space environment driven by the Sun and its impacts on objects in the solar system. Though it is almost 100 million miles away from Earth, the Sun influences our daily lives in ways you may not realize. 

Earth is a system of systems.

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Selected GLOBE protocols and learning activities which support some aspect of the investigation of scale, proportion and quantity are outlined.

 Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

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.

Explore and connect to GLOBE protocol bundles. Each bundle has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified.