In this activity, students will learn about sea ice and land ice. They will observe ice melting on a solid surface near a body of water and ice melting in a body of water.

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. 

This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.

This activity invites students to simulate and observe the different effects on sea level from melting sea-ice.

Students will watch a video on the Greenland Ice Sheet and answer questions.

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.

Students watch the video Frozen Earth and answer the following questions that discuss how ice helps moderate the planet's temperature using NASA satellites.

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

In this activity, students will use sea-level rise data to create models and compare short-term trends to long-term trends. They will then determine whether sea-level rise is occurring based on the data.

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.