Climate Simulator

This is a simulation that illustrates how temperature will be affected by global CO2 emission trajectories. It addresses the issue that even if global emissions begin to decrease, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will continue to increase, resulting in increased global temperatures.

Go To:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2009/dec/14/climate-simulator

Duncan Clark

Mairead O'Connor

Richard Bangay

Cai Ellis

Rosie Roche

The Guardian

Notes From Our Reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials

Teaching Tips

Implementing the use of the global carbon emissions interactive can be supported by information provided here: [link http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2009/dec/14/global-carbon-em...

About the Science

As a starting point, the user selects both the year in which global emissions will peak and the annual rate at which emissions will decline thereafter, and the tool graphs the resulting patterns of C02 concentration and global temperature.

The data used for the visualization is from the British National Weather Service, the Met Office.

Comments from expert scientist: The scientific strength of this activity includes the depiction of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures. The resource lacks references.

About the Pedagogy

The explanation provided (in the link "the idea behind our global simulator") gives good background and motivations for the simulator, definitely worth having students read this before using the simulator.

Technical Details

The simulator is very simple and easy to use, but to fully understand how to implement the use of the tool, user should read the background information first.