Students examine the two time series images to determine the differences between seasonal ice melt over water versus land.

This mini lesson helps students visualize how the Hydrosphere and Cryosphere interact to produce changes in land and sea ice. 

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

Arctic sea ice is the cap of frozen seawater blanketing most of the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas in wintertime. It follows seasonal patterns of thickening and melting. Students view how the quantity has changed from 1979 through 2018. 

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.

Use the Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of data to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of graphical representations of data.  This activity requires a graph for students to evaluate. 

This mini lesson has students explore three visualizations to see the new benchmark map scientists can use to study the extent and speed of changes to the largest ice sheet in the world.

In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.

The Eyjabakkajökull Glacier is an outlet glacier of the Vatnajökull ice cap in Iceland that has been retreating since a major surge occurred in 1973. Students analyze these maps to identify the scale and rate of change of the glacier loss.

In this activity, students use satellite images from the NASA Landsat team to quantify changes in glacier cover over time from 1986 to 2018.