Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Climate History From Deep Sea Sediments
Students access Integrated Ocean Drilling Program core data using Virtual Ocean, a visualization software that allows students to access scientific data about the ocean. They navigate and interpret the visualization and data to...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Climate Time Line Information Tool
A tool that summarizes climate history for time spans from 1 year to 100,000 years ago and beyond. It explores the relation between human development, weather, and climate. Students learn how past climate is measured, provides basic...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Time and Cycles: Dendrochronology
Students explore the direct impact of climate on annual tree growth patterns by using pre-marked paper strips to simulate tree-ring core samples.
Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth: Climate Change: Past History
A collection of articles on methods used to investigate changes in processes that are, and have been, affected by climate. It also covers the discoveries that have been made about climate change in the Earth's recent and ancient past.
Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth: Climate Change: Ice Cores and History of Climate Change
Article describing research done in the West Antarctica, where ice cores were removed to a depth of two miles, providing information on climate change over the last one hundred thousand years. (Date published: Feb. 2, 2011)
Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth: Climate Change: Ancient
A collection of articles on ancient climatology. They examine past extremes of the Earth's climate, cycles of climate change, and cataclysmic climate-changing events that are believed to have occurred.
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Ucar: Paleoclimates and Pollen
In this extensive lesson plan, learners examine and investigate pictures of pollen grains to determine the likely climate at the time the pollen was shed.
BBC
Bbc News: An Animated Journey Through the Earth's Climate History
A narrated journey through the last 800,000 years of the Earth's climate, accompanied by images and graphs. A text-only version is also available. (Published 3 Dec. 2009)
Other
The Geological Society: Climate Change: Evidence From the Geological Record
In this statement, The Geological Society describes the changes that are happening to the global climate in terms of what evidence has been observed in our geological history. For example, what happened during past events of rapid...
Ohio State University
Byrd Polar Research Center: Ice Core Paleoclimatology Research Group
This site explains the research of the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group. See how they are coring ice samples all around the world to help better understand Earth's changing climate. Provides links to teaching materials.
National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation: Ice Core Facility (Nsf Icf): About Ice Cores
A fantastic resource for learning about how ice cores are collected, the information we can learn from them about Earth's climate history, the types of research being done with them, and how they are stored. Includes lots of videos.
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Ucar: Tree Rings Simulation Dendrochronology
Tree rings help scientists learn about past climates by decoding tree ring patterns. Use this interactive simulation to learn how tree ring patterns tell us about climate conditions in the past.
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Ucar: Tree Rings and Climate Timeline Simulation
In this online interactive activity, you will align tree ring cores to build a long chronology of climate history.
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Learning Lab: Prehistoric Climate Change and Why It Matters Today
In a lesson in this issue of Smithsonian in Your Classroom, young scholars do the work of a team of paleontologists studying a time of rising carbon dioxide and rapid global warming during the Eocene epoch. By examining fossils of tree...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Topic Guide: Paleoclimate
In this activity students form groups, conduct research into paleoclimate, and report their findings in the form of a presentation.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Tracking Global Climate Change: Microfossil Record of Planetary Heat Pump
This lesson plan integrates physics, biology, and geology to understand planetary processes that contribute to climate change through time. It includes an activity that demonstrates heat transfer and it uses figures and charts to...
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Ucar: Dendrochronology Trees: Recorders of Climate Change
Students discover how tree age can be determined by studying the rings, and how ring thickness can be used to deduce times of optimal growing conditions. Then they investigate simulated tree rings applying the scientific method to...
University of Colorado
University of Colorado: Signs of Change: Studying Tree Rings
Learners gather information from real tree core samples and compare them with local climate history.
NASA
Nasa: Climate Kids: The Climate Time Machine
Check out this interactive timeline which illustrates how earth's climate has changed throughout history.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Getting to the Core of Climate Change
Students investigate climate changes going back thousands of years by graphing and analyzing ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica. They use information about natural and human-caused changes in the atmosphere to formulate...
American Geosciences Institute
American Geosciences Institute: Earth Science Week: Logs of Straw Dendrocronology
Using straws to recreate tree rings, learners learn how dendrochronologists work. Construct a 50-year climatic history on a three-meter time line.
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: When Will the Next Ice Age Happen?
Throughout Earth's history, climate has varied greatly. What causes these swings in the planet's climate? Lorraine Lisiecki investigates.
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Ice Stories: Ice and Sediment Cores
Learn how scientists look inside glacial ice sheets by studying ice cores and use the clues found there to learn about past climates.
American Geosciences Institute
American Geosciences Institute: How Ice Cores Are Used to Determine Past Climate
Find out how climate scientists use data from ice cores to determine past climate conditions.