Teaching Climate

In this activity, students calculate electricity use by state and determine, using Google Earth, how much land would be required to replace all sources of electricity with solar panels.

In this activity, students use the absorption spectra of greenhouse gases to explore the nature of the greenhouse effect.

In this activity, students compare countries and nation states with high- and low-energy consumption rates within a specific region of the world. Students are encouraged to draw linkages between a country's energy culture and its position in multilateral climate negotiations.

This activity explores how the topic of climate change is represented in various forms of writing, from scholarly articles to opinion pieces and works of fiction. While the content does not emphasize climate science itself, it instead allows students to focus on how the science is being portrayed.

In this activity, students use climate data to develop a simple graph of how climate has changed over time and then present the result in a blog, emphasizing effective science communication.

In this activity, students consider Greenland reflectivity changes from 2000 to 2012 and what albedo anomalies may indicate about how the Greenland ice sheet is changing in a case study format.

This activity in a case study format explores ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet by way of outlet glaciers that flow into the ocean. Students do basic calculations and learn about data trends, rates of change, uncertainty, and predictions.

In this activity, students analyze data maps of sea surface temperature anomalies for a 14-year interval and create an ENSO time line in a case study format. Based on their findings, students determine the recurrence interval of the ENSO system.

In this activity, students examine climate variability in the North Atlantic associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NOA) in a case study format.

In this activity, students work with climate data from the tropical Pacific Ocean to understand how sea-surface temperature and atmospheric pressure affect precipitation in the tropical Pacific in a case study format.