Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.
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Students explore positive feedback effects of changing albedo from melting Arctic sea ice.
Students watch a video explaining albedo and its impact on Earth. The video shows visualizations of albedo across Earth and how it can change. Students will interpret the images in the video and answer questions about albedo.
Students will make a claim about whether changing albedo contributes to changes in Arctic habitats.
Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected.
Students connect day/night and seasonal cycles with albedo in the Arctic region.
Dr. Norman Loeb, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is the principal investigator for an experiment called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). CERES instruments measure how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much thermal energy is emitted by Earth to space.