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.

Background information on soil moisture.

Students will use coloring sheets to create a color coded model of El Niño and analyze it. If the Data Literacy Map Cube is used with this, students will color their models first.

Background information on the El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO.

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.

Hands-on demonstration of the El Niño Effect, trade winds, and upwelling provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities. 

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.

Explore the energy and matter cycles found within the Earth System. 

Students will examine a 2014-2015 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event to identify relationships among sea surface height, sea surface temperature, precipitation, and wind vectors.