This PBS Learning Media activity addresses drought basics, including its causes and impacts and ways to assess it, by using media from NOAA and NASA. It defines the types of drought, the impacts, monitoring, and responses to drought. Use this resource to stimulate thinking and questions on the complexity of drought and to identify some variables used in defining drought.

This activity allows students to demonstrate the thermal expansion of water for themselves using water bottles and straws. The discussion allows them to explore the connection between this concept and sea level rise due to climate change.

This video features Katharine Hayhoe presenting a lively discussion of impacts that the Midwestern US is experiencing due to climate change. It steps through evidence for how climate change is affecting agriculture, tourism, drought and flood, water cycles and freshwater availability, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

This very short video introduces the concept of sea level rise and ties it back to global warming. The video is brief, basic, and clear. It can be used for a quick introduction, but nothing deeper than that.

This activity allows students to make El Nino in a container, but it might work better as a teacher demonstration. The introduction and information provided describe El Nino, its processes and its effects on weather elsewhere in the world.

Using real data from NASA's GRACE satellites, students will track water mass changes in the U.S., data that measures changes in ice, surface and especially groundwater. The background information includes an animated video about where water exists and how it moves around Earth, as well as short video clips to introduce the GRACE mission and explain how satellites collect data. Students will estimate water resources using heat-map data, create a line graph for a specific location, then assess trends and discuss implications. This activity illustrates the importance of water resources and how changes in climate are closely linked to changes in water resources. The activity could fit into many parts of a science curriculum, for example a unit on water could be connected to climate change.

Here students use data from the NOAA carbon dioxide monitoring sites, such as Mauna Loa, to graph the Keeling Curve for themselves on large sheets of paper. Each group graphs one year, and the graphs are joined at the end to reveal the overall upward trend. The explanation describes the carbon cycle and how human activities are leading to the overall trend of rising carbon dioxide.

This video discusses impacts that the Midwestern US is experiencing due to climate change. It describes how climate change is affecting agriculture, tourism, drought and flood, water cycles and freshwater availability, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

This video discusses impacts that the Eastern US is experiencing due to climate change. It describes the seasonal shifts that may affect tourism in New England, extreme heat in the Southeast, how rising sea level affects coastal areas, changes in hurricane intensity, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

In this interactive activity students will create a very simple climate model. They use worksheets, chips/tokens, and follow rules for heat exchange. The activity only models temperature but there are instructions for adaptations of the model, such as rule changes for an atmosphere with increased levels of CO2.