Teaching Climate

In this lesson, students analyze and synthesize data, and design local flood preparation strategies to answer the question, "What can we learn from past flood events to prepare for future floods?"

This video provides a detailed description of the habitat of the American Pika and how this organism may serve as a climate indicator species because they have a relatively narrow ecological niche and specialized habitat.

This video discusses how the historic way of life for Arctic Native Americans has changed. Global climate change is altering the ice cycle (yearly coverage, depth, and persistence) in the Bering Sea and weather patterns. Changes in the ice affect the way local native groups are able to hunt for food, and maintain their community.

This 7-minute video illustrates how the historic homeland of Arctic Native Americans is being affected by climate change. Loss of ice has profound effects on the way of life in the Bering Sea region.

After the Ice: Our Food discusses changes in historic food sources for Arctic Native Americans. Global climate change is altering yearly cycles of both ice coverage and depth in the Bering Sea. Changes in the ice affect the way local native groups hunt in order to feed their community.

This is an interactive visualization that allows users to explore the scientific research being done on Thwaites glacier, one of the most important glaciers in Antarctica.

Students create a model of sea level rise based on the melting of land ice, sea ice, or grounded ice. Student predictions are recorded and models are run. Making explanations based on data, cause and effect, and asking questions are emphasized in this activity.

This video explores the affect on seabirds of a three year ocean warming event (2013-16) in the NW Pacific. With ocean warming, a massive die off occurred based on the decline of food resources.

This series of visualizations is part of a rich multi-agency effort to showcase the usefulness of open data (i.e., data provided in a discoverable, sharable, and machine-readable format) by exploring the 16-year drought as of 2016 and its effects on the Colorado River Basin.

Using US Drought Monitor data and its classification system, this interactive tool tracks drought in the continental US by county, from 2000 to the present.