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 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.

Sea Level Scientists are also known by several other names (marine geologist, paleoceanographer, paleoclimatologist, etc.). These professionals use natural records from the past to characterize local, regional, and global environments.

Students watch a video explaining albedo and its impact on Earth. The video shows visualizations of albedo across Earth and how it can change. Students will interpret the images in the video and answer questions about albedo.

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.

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NASA Earth Observations (NEO) strives to make global satellite imagery as accessible as possible. Here you can browse and download imagery of satellite data from NASA's constellation of Earth Observing System satellites.

The Cryosphere refers to any place on Earth where water is in its solid form, where low temperatures freeze water and turn it into ice. The frozen water can be in the form of solid ice or snow and occurs in many places around the Earth. People often think of the polar regions of our planet as the main home of the Cyrosphere; the North Pole in the Arctic, as well as the South Pole in the Antarctic. The cryosphere exists in the polar regions, but is also found wherever snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs exists. In these places, surface temperatures remain below freezing for a portion of each year. 

This mini lesson helps students visualize how the Hydrosphere and Cryosphere interact to produce changes in land and sea ice. 

Explore and connect to protocols in GLOBE related to the cryosphere. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified as well.