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

This lesson contains a card sort activity that challenges students to predict relative albedo values of common surfaces. 

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

Students use albedo values of common surfaces along with photographic images of Earth taken from the International Space Station to make an argument about specific anthropogenic activities that impact Earth’s albedo.

Students will practice the process of making claims, collecting evidence to support claims, and applying scientific reasoning to connect evidence to claims.

Examine (daytime) surface temperature and solar radiation received at locations found near similar latitudes using NASA Data.

Scientific data are often represented by assigning ranges of numbers to specific colors. The colors are then used to make false color images which allow us to see patterns more easily. Students will make a false-color image using a set of numbers.

Information from satellites if often used to display information about objects. This information can include how things appear, as well as their contents. Explore how pixel data sequences can be used to create an image and interpret it.

My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, StoryMaps, for use in educational settings.

This StoryMap allows students to explore the urban heat island effect using land surface temperature and vegetation data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students investigate the processes that create differences in surface temperatures, as well as how human activities have led to the creation of urban heat islands.