Background information on sea and land ice melt.

 Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

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

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

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.

Students analyze four data visualizations focused on the topic of sea level.  They use a jigsaw method to explore and communicate their findings to their peers.

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

The Hurricane Dynamics Implementation Sequence provides a series of lessons and activities for students to learn how hurricanes affect the different spheres within the Earth System by using maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report informat

In this activity, we will introduce children to the colors of the sky. Children love to look at clouds. Here we will focus in on the sky in which clouds float. Children will learn why the sky has such a wide range of colors.

The Cryosphere refers to any place on Earth where water is in its solid form, where low temperatures freeze water and turn it into ice. The frozen water can be in the form of solid ice or snow and occurs in many places around the Earth. People often think of the polar regions of our planet as the main home of the Cyrosphere; the North Pole in the Arctic, as well as the South Pole in the Antarctic. The cryosphere exists in the polar regions, but is also found wherever snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs exists. In these places, surface temperatures remain below freezing for a portion of each year.