Students will watch a short video that explains albedo and how it plays an important role in Earth’s Energy Budget. Applying what they learned from the video, students will analyze a bar graph that lists the albedos of common surfaces found on Earth to answer critical thinking questions.

Students connect day/night and seasonal cycles with albedo in the Arctic region. 

Guided by the 5E model, this lesson allows students to work together to uncover how changes in sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic regions are connected to Earth’s energy budget.

Students differentiate between data sets of monthly shortwave radiation and monthly cloud coverage to discover a relationship between radiation and clouds by answering analysis questions.

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

Students identify patterns and describe the relationship between chlorophyll concentration and incoming shortwave radiation. 

Students will watch and examine a NASA animation of Earth’s rising surface temperatures over an almost 150 year period.

Image Credit: NASA

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.