Teaching Climate

Topic(s): Measurements and Observations, Climate Impacts, Personal Responsibility, Human Responses to Climate, Energy Use

Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

Redford Center Stories is an environmental storytelling initiative for students in grades 5th-12th, designed to empower youth as changemakers to impact environmental justice, restoration, and regeneration through the power of storytelling.

Flow: Currents and Climate

Topic(s): Thermohaline Circulation, Ocean and Climate, El Nino, La Nina, ENSO, Cyclical and Natural Changes, Climate Data, Extreme Weather

Grade Level: Intermediate (3-5), Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional, Informal Education

This video introduces viewers to oceanic thermohaline circulation - the system of global ocean currents that cycle warm and cold water across the planet.

Fostering Dialogue to Support Community Resilience

Topic(s): Mitigation Strategies, Adaptation Strategies, Human Responses to Climate

Grade Level: High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

This video outlines background information about and goals of resilience with a focus on communities and climate resilience.

Predicting Patterns: What Does La Niña Look Like?

Topic(s): Ocean and Climate, El Nino, La Nina, ENSO, Climate Data

Grade Level: High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

This is an activity designed to allow students who have been exposed to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation to analyze the La Niña mechanism and predict its outcomes in a case study format.

Tropical Ice Cores Measure Climate

Topic(s): Measurements and Observations, Paleoclimate Records, Climate Data

Grade Level: High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

This video profiles glaciologist Lonnie Thompson and his research into tropical mountain glaciers as a way to understand climate history. Beginning in the 1970s, Thompson recognized that tropical ice cores contain information relating to tropical climate phenomena, including El Niño events and monsoons. These phenomena are not archived in ice from polar regions. Thompson explains that his archive of ice cores is full of clues that, taken together with records collected from around the world, can help scientists create a timeline that tells Earth's climate story.

What are the causes and effects of ENSO?

Topic(s): El Nino, La Nina, ENSO, Adaptation Strategies, Risk Management

Grade Level: High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

This activity addresses naturally occurring climate change involving ENSO (El-Niño Southern Oscillation). In this activity, students play the role of a policy maker in Peru. First, they determine what sort of ENSO variation is occurring. Then, they must decide how to allocate Peru's resources to manage for possible weather-related problems.

22 Years of Sea Surface Temperatures

Topic(s): Seasons, El Nino, La Nina, ENSO, Seasonal Variability, Cyclical and Natural Changes, Measurements and Observations, Measuring and Modeling Climate

Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

This NOAA visualization on YouTube shows the seasonal variations in sea surface temperatures and ice cover from 1985 to 2007. The visualization is based on data collected by NOAA polar-orbiting satellites. El Niño and La Niña are easily identified, as are the trends in decreasing polar sea ice.

Effects of El Niño/La Niña on Phytoplankton and Fish

Topic(s): Ocean and Climate, El Nino, La Nina, ENSO, Measurements and Observations, Plants and Animals

Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

This video shows 15 years of data obtained via Polar-orbiting satellites that are able to detect subtle differences in ocean color, allowing scientists to see where there are higher concentrations of phytoplankton - a proxy for the concentration of chlorophyll in the ocean.

Climate Change and Risks of New Pandemics

Topic(s): Ecosystem Changes, Public Health, Climate Impacts

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional

Through this lesson plan your students will learn that human induced climate change causes biodiversity disturbances and could be responsible for the increased risk of animal virus spillover into human populations. Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to integrate the teaching of a climate science topic with a core topic in Biological and Environmental Sciences. The lab allows students to explore the impact of climate change on an organism of their choice by doing a diachronic analysis of data from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

Carbon Dioxide, Shell Building, and Ocean Acidification

Topic(s): Plants and Animals, Ocean Warming / Acidification

Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16), Informal Education

This interactive visualization explains the chemical relationship between carbon dioxide, shell building, and ocean acidification.

Topics

Grade Level

Climate Literacy Principles

Energy Literacy Principles

Teaching Climate