What is the hydrosphere and why is it important?

Explore and connect to GLOBE protocol bundles. Each bundle has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified.

Test your knowledge of soil moisture and its effect on global populations.  Soil moisture is the amount of water contained

What is sea-level rise and how does it affect us? This "Teachable Moment" looks at the science behind sea-level rise and offers lessons and tools for teaching students about this important climate topic. 

In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Every day, scientists at NASA work on creating better hurricanes on a computer screen. At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a team of scientists spends its days incorporating millions of atmospheric observations. Sophisticated graphic tools and lines of computer code to create computer models simulating the weather and climate conditions responsible for hurricanes.

This activity was developed by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) team as an introductory experience to a series of lessons about water resources on Earth.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Rivers and Lakes protocol bundle. 

Explore and connect to protocols in GLOBE related to the cryosphere. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified as well.

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.