Teaching Climate

In this activity, students use a physical model to learn the basics of photosynthesis and respiration within the carbon cycle.

This interactive tool allows viewers to explore, by county, the areas of California threatened by a rise in sea level through this century.

In this activity from NOAA's Okeanos Explorer Education Materials Collection, learners investigate how methane hydrates might have been involved with the Cambrian explosion.

In this experiment, students observe a natural process that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth's atmosphere. This process is a part of the carbon cycle and results in temperature suitable for life. Students learn that the carbon cycle is a fundamental Earth process. Throughout Earth's history, the balance of carbon has kept the atmosphere's carbon dioxide (CO2) and Earth's temperature within relatively narrow ranges.

Students explore how various energy sources can be used to cause a turbine to rotate and then generate electricity with a magnet.

This classroom activity is aimed at an understanding of different ecosystems by understanding the influence of temperature and precipitation. Students correlate graphs of vegetation vigor with those of temperature and precipitation data for four diverse ecosystems, ranging from near-equatorial to polar, and spanning both hemispheres to determine which climatic factor is limiting growth.

This cloud lab allows exploration of cloud identification, reconstructing and following hurricanes, and interpreting and investigating data. Graphs and other data interpretation are used heavily throughout the lesson. This is an in-depth activity with many facets for students to explore.

In this comprehensive climate change curricula from EcoRise, students will discuss the likelihood that different groups of people will experience the negative impacts of climate changes (risk) and the factors that contribute to the degree of danger they might face (vulnerability). A role-play activity supports an understanding of how climate change affects individuals and groups differently based on social factors such as income, education, cultural background, and age.

This activity from the Paleontological Research Institution and Cornell University supports an understanding of chemistry and physics concepts by instructing students to create their own solar cell with the help of instructional videos.

Students learn about Earth's energy balance and use data to better understand why the Arctic is warming faster than other locations on Earth. This comes from analyzing and interpreting incoming and outgoing energy data from the Arctic and constructing conceptual models to explain how outgoing longwave energy from the Arctic is contributing to the Arctic amplification.