This video is about Eunice Newton Foote, who studied the effect different gases have on the heat from the sun's rays. This is an engaging and funny video that describes the basis of climate science, while also discussing the hindering role of sexism in advancing science.

This 15-panel interactive from NOVA Online describes some of the factors (such as Earth's rotation and the sun's uneven heating of Earth's surface) contributing to the formation of the high-speed eastward flows of the jet streams, found near the top of the troposphere. These jet streams play a major role in guiding weather systems.

This online lab exercise focuses on the causes, characteristics and effects of the glacial-interglacial cycle. The sixth in a 10-part lab series on weather and climate, this lab exercise is designed for first and second year college geoscience students (majors and non-majors) as well as pre-service STEM teachers.

Students use historical data on the extent of the Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park to estimate when the glacier will melt completely.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Students describe and interpret glacial features exposed in gravel pits and outcrops.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This short video shows an example of melting alpine glaciers in the Austrian Alps (Goldberg Glacier). Disappearing alpine glaciers have social and environmental impacts, including the decline of fresh water supplies and contributions to sea level rise.

This activity engages learners in examining data pertaining to the disappearing glaciers in Glacier National Park. After calculating percentage change of the number of glaciers from 1850 (150) to 1968 (50) and 2009 (26), students move on to the main glacier-monitoring content of the module--area vs. time data for the Grinnell Glacier, one of 26 glaciers that remain in the park. Using a second-order polynomial (quadratic function) fitted to the data, they extrapolate to estimate when there will be no Grinnell Glacier remaining (illustrating the relevance of the question mark in the title of the module).

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Buried within glaciers is a history of ancient ecosystems, including microbes and viruses past. Some of the airborne microbes and viruses that populate our atmosphere are often carried by snowflakes or dust onto the surface of glaciers. By studying glacial ice cores, scientists can reconstruct histories of microbes and viruses and the climatic and environmental conditions they experienced. Two problems that plague current methods of analyzing ice cores are contamination and low microbe biomass. To address these challenges, researchers recently developed a method for decontaminating ice core surfaces and extracting clean inner ice to study microbes and viruses. When applied to ice from the Guliya ice cap on the Tibetan Plateau in China, the method revealed a unique viral community of mostly novel taxa, providing the first window into viral genomes, communities, and functions in ancient glacier environments..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Featuring images of glacier formations, this interactive resource adapted from the National Park Service explains what glaciers are, where they are found, how they form, and how they move.

This article provides an overview of the types of glaciers, glacial formation, movement and retreat, and how scientists are studying glaciers and their response to climate change.

In this activity, students compare two photographs (with time spans of 30-100 years between photos) of specific Alaskan glaciers to observe how glaciers have changed over the time interval. Activity is a good kickoff for learning about glaciology - how and why glaciers form, grow and shrink, and their relation to climate change.

An interactive simulation that allows the user to adjust mountain snowfall and temperature to see the glacier grow and shrink in response.

In this activity students work with data to analyze local and global temperature anomaly data to look for warming trends. The activity focuses on the Great Lakes area.

Prior to this assignment, students read Chapter 2 (Earth's Climate System Today) of W. Ruddiman's Earth's Climate book and online information about the TRMM dataset. In the computer lab, students download the instructions and the pre-processed dataset from course website. The lab assignment consists of GIS raster algebra operations used to generate average precipitation rasters and to calculate anomalies. Throughout the assignment, students are asked to interpret and explain global precipitation patterns.

In this project students learn through lecture, video, and sketching about the Coriolis effect, the "Six-Cell Generalized Global Atmospheric Circulation Model", the shifting ITCZ, the Indian Monsoon, and its impact on the day-to-day lives of the people of India.
The outcomes for this assignment are aligned with course-specific outcomes articulated in the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. They are:

Discuss/compare characteristics of diverse cultures and environments in the context of ocean science.
Explain the basic structure and function of the ocean realm, the impact of humans on it, and the impact of the ocean realm on humans.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This simulation allows the user to project CO2 sources and sinks by adjusting the points on a graph and then running the simulation to see projections for the impact on atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures.

This video features the Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment Experiment near Cheyenne WY, where scientists expose mixed-grass prairie to higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations to study impacts on the prairie for late in this century.

This class is designed to expose you to the cycles of disasters, the roots of emergency planning in the U.S., how to understand and map vulnerabilities, and expose you to the disaster planning in different contexts, including in developing countries.

This class is designed to expose you to the cycles of disasters, the roots of emergency planning in the U.S., how to understand and map vulnerabilities, and expose you to the disaster planning in different contexts, including in developing countries.

Paul Andersen explains how the climate on the earth is affected by the amount of solar radiation and the greenhouse affect. The addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gases has led to global warming which is impacting humans on the planet. A discussion of the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases (including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs) is included. Countries have committed to reduce through both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.