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. 

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.

Students analyze the stability and change of sea level after watching a visualization of sea level height around the world. 

Watch NASA videos about aerosols and volcanic ash.

The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.

In this lesson, Observing Earth’s Seasonal Changes, students observe patterns of average snow and ice amounts as they change from one month to another, as well as connect the concepts of the tilt and orbit of the Earth (causing the changing of seasons) with monthly snow/ice data from January 2008

Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.

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.

Learners will analyze and interpret a box plot and evaluate the spread of the data. Learners will compare it with a different visualization of the data to see how the two compare, discuss the limitations of the two types of data displays and formulate questions.

Use the Data Literacy Cube 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.   Fo