Teaching Climate

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 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 video addresses how climate change is affecting the biomes and ecosystems in the US Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean Islands. It also highlights the impacts on infrastructure and defines key climate science terms.

This video documents the effects of increasing global temperatures on biodiversity (changes in distribution, range, and numbers) and human populations. Adaptations to climate change are also outlined.

This video addresses acidification of the ocean and the ecological and economic implications of the resulting pH change on marine life. It includes information about how ocean acidification resulting from increased absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere is affecting ocean species such as sea urchins and oysters. Scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara discuss their experiments with sea creatures in acidic sea water. There is an associated lesson plan and classroom activity that has students test the effects of CO2 on water pH.

The video addresses impact of warming temperatures on major lakes of the world with specific focus on Lake Superior and Lake Tanganyika. It discusses the science of water stratification and its impact on lake ecosystems and on human populations whose livelihoods depend on the lakes.

This video documents the scope of changes in the Arctic, focusing on the impacts of warming and climate change on the indigenous Inuit population.

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

Students run a simplified computer model to explore how climate conditions can affect caribou, the most abundant grazing animal in the Arctic.