Students explore albedo, sea ice, and the relationship between changing albedo and changing sea ice using data visualizations. 

Background information on sea and land ice melt.

My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, story maps, for use in educational settings.

Charles Gatebe is a climate scientist who studies reflected sunlight to improve our understanding of the composition of the atmosphere and surface properties, including land and ocean, and impact on Earth's radiation budget and climate. Learn about how he conducts experiments and uses data from around the world.

Students evaluate graphs and images of sea ice and relate them to changes in albedo. Students make a claim about the interaction of albedo and sea ice extent.

Students will observe monthly satellite data of the North Atlantic to identify relationships among key science variables that include sea surface salinity (SS), air temperature at the ocean surface (AT), sea surface temperature (ST), evaporation (EV), precipitation (PT), and evaporation minus pre

Students explore positive feedback effects of changing albedo from melting Arctic sea ice.

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.

Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.

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