Review this page to learn about the background of volcanoes and their eruptions.

Students will investigate the role of clouds and their contribution (if any) to global warming. Working in cooperative groups, students will make a claim about the future role clouds will play in Earth’s Energy Budget if temperatures continue to increase.

The Earth System Satellite Images, along with the Data Literacy Cubes, helps the learner identify patterns in a specific image.  

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.

This lesson is designed to help students analyze the interaction between different cloud heights and Earth's incoming and outgoing energy. 

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.

The Earth System Satellite Images, along with the Data Literacy Cubes, help the learner visualize how different Earth system variables change over time, identify patterns, and determine relationships among two variables in three months.

Phytoplankton distribution background information.

Meet Jim Crawford, lead project scientist in atmospheric chemistry from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. 

Dr. Stackhouse uses satellite observations of the Earth-atmosphere system from multiple sources to study Earth’s global energy cycle, especially the processes that cause variability from global to regional scales. Dr. Stackhouse also develops new data products and data systems to help analyze these processes and more efficiently understand and use renewable energy sources.