This short video uses animated imagery from satellite remote sensing systems to illustrate that Earth is a complex, evolving body characterized by ceaseless change. Adapted from NASA, this visualization helps explain why understanding Earth as an integrated system of components and processes is essential to science education.
This is a team-based activity that teaches students about the scale of the greenhouse gas problem and the technologies that already exist which can dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Students select carbon-cutting strategies to construct a carbon mitigation profile, filling in the wedges of a climate stabilization triangle.
In this activity, students explore the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 40 years with an interactive online model. They use the model and observations to estimate present emission rates and emission growth rates. The model is then used to estimate future levels of carbon dioxide using different future emission scenarios. These different scenarios are then linked by students to climate model predictions also used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This video features a short animated sequence that illustrates the difference between young and old carbon released into the atmosphere from the consumption of food (young carbon) and the burning of fossil fuels (old carbon).
This video examines what will happen to crops as Earth's temperature rises and soils dry out because of changing climate. Students learn that a loss of soil moisture causes stress to plants, leading to crop withering. Since humans and animals depend directly or indirectly on plants for food, many societal problems can be expected to arise due to the impact of climate warming on crops and the societies that depend on them.
This interactive video series reviews global warming by recognizing the problem, addressing the sources and impacts, and weighing the options. It is a six-chapter series. Experts from different countries weigh in and answer some critical questions, including what countries have resources and the perspectives necessary to reach a consensus on handling the next steps and the economic costs involved.
In this learning activity, students use a web-based geologic timeline to examine temperature, CO2 concentration, and ice cover data to investigate how climate has changed during the last 715 million years.
This activity students through the ways scientists monitor changes in Earth's glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets. Students investigate about glacier locations, glacial movement, and impacts of climate change on glaciers depending on the depth of research. It is linked to 2009 PBS Nova program entitled Extreme Ice.
With this simulation from the NASA Climate website, learners explore different examples of how ice is melting due to climate change in four places where large quantities of ice are found. The photo comparisons, graphs, animations, and especially the time lapse video clips of glaciers receding are astonishing and dramatic.