Listen to this podcast interview where Allison Lee describes her experience working in the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as shares her passion for phytoplankton research.

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

This resource collection models for you (and your students) the process of analyzing solar radiation and phytoplankton data collected by satellites in the Arctic waters. 

This content has been moved. You can find it under Sea Ice and the Earth System Story Map link.

Students explore the spatial patterns observed in meteorological data and learn how this information is used to predict weather and understand climate behavior.

Many of our archived lessons date back to as early as 2004 when our learning community first formed and unfortunately contain links to content that is no longer updated or exist.

The Cryosphere refers to any place on Earth where water is in its solid form, where low temperatures freeze water and turn it into ice. The frozen water can be in the form of solid ice or snow and occurs in many places around the Earth. People often think of the polar regions of our planet as the main home of the Cyrosphere; the North Pole in the Arctic, as well as the South Pole in the Antarctic. The cryosphere exists in the polar regions, but is also found wherever snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs exists. In these places, surface temperatures remain below freezing for a portion of each year. 

This mini-lesson features time-series graphs of mean salinity at the surface for the Arctic and Antarctic regions. A series of questions guides students in their analysis.

How much do you know about the frozen poles of our home planet?

Using various visualizations (i.e., images, charts, and graphs), students will explore changes in sea ice extent as it relates to other spheres within the Earth System. This story map is intended to be used with students who have access to a computing device in a 1:1 or 1:2 setting.