A kinesthetic activity that challenges students to participate in a model that describes the fate of solar energy as it enters the Earth system. A good initial lesson for Earth’s energy budget, students unravel the benefits and limitations of their model.
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In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.
Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.
Students analyze the relationship between sea surface height and ocean surface currents by graphing sea height using satellite data. Note: This lesson is modified from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon lesson plan.
In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents. This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective
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.
In this activity, students explore three indicators of drought are: soil moisture, lack of precipitation, and decreased streamflows. Students investigate each of these parameters develop a sense for the effects of drought on land.
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.
This unit plan is published by the NASA Climate Change Research Initiative's (CCRI) Applied Research STEM Curriculum Portfolio. The CCRI Unit Plan, called “Urban Surface Temperatures and the Urban Heat Island Effects,“ has the purpose to educate students how climate is changi