Climate Literacy
Clean: 12 Steps to a Sustainable High School
This activity includes an assessment, analysis, and action tool that can be used by classrooms to promote understanding of how the complex current issues of energy, pollution, supply, and consumption are not just global but also local...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Colorado River Supply
Students examine available data of water in the Colorado River Basin, study the possible consequences of changes to various user groups, and suggest solutions to adapt to these changes.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Energy Enigma
Students act as detectives and research clues to uncover energy facts. This cooperative learning activity accesses language arts and critical thinking skills as students try to conceal their own energy source while guessing the opposing...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Earth's Albedo
This engaging activity introduces young scholars to the concept of albedo and how it relates to Earth's energy balance. They measure the albedo using maps, data tables, and a shaker filled with popcorn kernels. Then, they estimate the...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Generating Electricity: Evaluating the Sustainability Energy Sources
In this activity, students learn about the energy sources used by their local utility provider to generate electricity and work in small groups to evaluate the sustainability of either a renewable or non-renewable resource used to...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Person on the Street (Pos) Interview About Climate Science
A media project where young scholars create a video that documents unrehearsed interviews with "people on the street" about a specific question or issue in climate science.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Animation for Grades 6 12
Students will create an animation to represent one of the many feedback loops that influences climate change. To create their animation, students will use clay, cut paper, whiteboard or other materials commonly found in the classroom....
Climate Literacy
Clean: Ocean Impacts on an El Nino Event
Students examine the relationships among sea surface height, sea surface temperature, and wind vectors in classifying the ocean characteristics of an El Nino.
Climate Literacy
Clean: A Fossil Thermometer
In this activity, students calculate temperatures during a time in the geologic record when rapid warming occurred using a well known method called 'leaf-margin analysis.' Students determine the percentage of the species that have leaves...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Impacts of Topography on Sea Level Change
Students use web-based animations to explore the impacts of ice melt, specifically changes to sea level. They also use topographic maps to examine the relationship between topography and sea level change by mapping changing shorelines.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Sea Level Rise
Students will learn the difference between sea ice and glaciers in relation to sea level rise using topographic maps.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Tropical Atlantic Aerosols
Students will use real satellite data to determine where the greatest concentrations of aerosols are located during the course of a year in the tropical Atlantic region and their source of origin.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Ocean Currents and Sea Surface Temperature
To discover the link between ocean temperatures and currents as related to our concern for current climate change.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Global Patterns in Green Up and Green Down
Young scholars analyze and explore visualizations and graphs that show the annual cycle of plant growth and decline. They investigate several regions in each hemisphere that have different land cover and will match graphs that show...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Temperature and Precipitation as Limiting Factors in Ecosystems
Students correlate graphs of vegetation vigor with those of temperature and precipitation data for four diverse ecosystems, ranging from those near the equator to the poles, to determine which climatic factor is limiting growth.
Climate Literacy
Clean: March of the Polar Bears: Global Change, Sea Ice, and Wildlife Migration
Students use NASA satellite data to study temperature and snow-ice coverage in the South Beaufort Sea, Alaska. With the data, they investigate global change, sea ice changes, and polar bear migration.
Climate Literacy
Clean: The Earth's Heat Budget
Students investigate the effects of distance and angle on the input of solar radiation at the Earth's surface, the role played by albedo, and the heat capacity of land and water.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Global Warming Webquest
Students collaborate as part of a climate action team and learn how society and the environment might be impacted by global warming. Student teams investigate how and why climate is changing and how humans may have contributed to these...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Home Energy Quiz
Students take an Energy Quiz to identify home improvements that could make their homes more energy efficient.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Mauna Loa Co2 Collection Data
This data-intensive activity uses real world datasets to cover topics such as weather v. climate, air circulation around the globe, seasonal effects, and climate change.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Exploring Green Jobs
Using an online tool, young scholars learn about what green jobs might suit their personal styles. Then they look at different Green Jobs to explore possible careers.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Carbon Footprint
In this lesson students investigate how much greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide and methane) their family releases into the atmosphere each year and relate it to climate change. To address this, students use the Environmental Protection...
Climate Literacy
Clean: Going for a Spin Making a Model Steam Turbine
Learners explore how various energy sources can be used to cause a turbine to rotate and then generate electricity with a magnet.
Climate Literacy
Clean: Automotive Emissions and the Greenhouse Effect
This is a laboratory activity in which students will compare the amount of carbon dioxide in four different sources of gas and determine the carbon dioxide contribution from automobiles. They test ambient air, human exhalation,...