The GLOBE Program provides students with the ability to explore Earth as a System with data sets and protocols related to the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Hydrosphere, and Geosphere. 

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities. 

Elizabeth Forsbacka is an instrument manager. She leads a diverse team to design, build and test Earth or space science instruments. She says "My job is to build a good team that can do it all. Our work from design through delivery of the spacecraft usually takes about four years." See what it's like to work on this sort of project.

Students will analyze and interpret maps of the average net atmospheric radiation to compare the flow of energy from the Sun toward Earth in different months and for cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw conclusions and support them with evidence.

The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.

For over 20 years, satellite instruments have measured the sea surface height of our ever-changing oceans.  This video of images shows the complicated patterns of rising and falling ocean levels across the globe from 1993 to 2015.

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

Students will analyze and interpret graphs to compare the flow of (shortwave) energy from the Sun toward China over the course of a year on cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw a conclusion and support it with evidence.

Explore using units for calculations with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). NDVI is a ratio of different light wavelength reflectance which can be used to map the density of green vegetation.

Explore and connect to pedosphere protocols in GLOBE. Each protocol correlates to related datasets from the Earth System Data Explorer.