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

Students analyze diagrams showing the effects of clouds on Earth’s Radiation and answer the questions that follow. This mini lesson is designed to help students analyze the interaction between clouds and Earth's incoming and outgoing energy. 

Exploring salinity patterns is a great way to better understand the relationships between the water cycle, ocean circulation, and climate. In this mini lesson, students analyze sea surface salinity mapped plots created from the Earth System Data Explorer, paired with questions (and answers) from the Aquarius Mission. Credit: Aquarius Education

This lesson walks students through the use of Landsat false-color imagery and identification of different land cover features using these as models.

Students identify and classify kinds of land cover (such as vegetation, urban areas, water, and bare soil) in Landsat satellite images of Phoenix, Arizona taken in 1984 and 2018.

Students learn how to estimate the "energy efficiency" of photosynthesis, or the amount of energy that plants absorb for any given location on Earth. This is the ratio of the amount of energy stored to the amount of light energy absorbed and is used to evaluate and model photosynthesis efficiency.

This investigation is part of the NASA: Mission Geography Module "What are the causes and consequences of climate change?" that guides students through explorations in climatic variability and evidence for global climate change. 

This mini-lesson guides students' observations of soil moisture anomalies (how much the moisture content was above or below the norm) for the continental US in May 2018.

This NASA visualization shows sea surface salinity observations (September 2011-September 2014). Students review the video and answer questions.

Students evaluate graphs and images of sea ice and relate them to changes in albedo. Students make a claim about the interaction of albedo and sea ice extent.