Students discuss their current understanding of what Earth systems are and how they work and consider how to identify the boundaries of a region for Earth system study.
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The Earth System Satellite Images help students observe and analyze global Earth and environmental data, understand the relationship among different environmental variables, and explore how the data change seasonally and over longer timescales.
By investigating the data presented in a model that displays extreme summer air temperatures, students explain energy transfer in the Earth system and consider the impact of excessive heat on local communities.
Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.
Students consider the impact of changing conditions on the remote island of Little Diomede, Alaska after they investigate the relationship between seasonal trends in sea ice extent with shortwave and longwave radiation flux described in Earth’s energy budget.
Hands-on demonstration of the El Niño Effect, trade winds, and upwelling provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
The El Niño Implementation Sequence provides a series of lessons and activities for students to learn about a condition that sometimes occurs in the Pacific Ocean, but it is so big that it affects weather all over the world.
Students watch the video Frozen Earth and answer the following questions that discuss how ice helps moderate the planet's temperature using NASA satellites.
This Lesson Plan provides some generic maps, graphs, and data tables for use with the Data Literacy Cube. Because this is a differentiated resource, it is appropriate for multiple grade bands.
For over 20 years, satellite instruments have measured the sea surface height of our ever-changing oceans. This video of images shows the complicated patterns of rising and falling ocean levels across the globe from 1993 to 2015.