An introductory environmental science project tasking students with comparing offshore oil and wind power development.

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Maps displaying global environmental data (specifically Solar Energy and Average Temperature) through the course of a year are compared in order to understand how the Earth works as a system focusing on Polar Regions. Students then explore data from schools located in Alaska and Antarctica to understand processes that drive the temperature patterns; students then visit the National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site to learn more about the Cryosphere (focusing on Albedo and Sea Ice); finally students visit NOAA's web site looking at data of Sea Ice data anomalies. (Link to the relevant pages in these web sites are listed below.)

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This course discusses the selection and evaluation of commercial and naval ship power and propulsion systems. It will cover the analysis of propulsors, prime mover thermodynamic cycles, propeller-engine matching, propeller selection, waterjet analysis, and reviews alternative propulsors. The course also investigates thermodynamic analyses of Rankine, Brayton, Diesel, and Combined cycles, reduction gears and integrated electric drive. Battery operated vehicles and fuel cells are also discussed. The term project requires analysis of alternatives in propulsion plant design for given physical, performance, and economic constraints. Graduate students complete different assignments and exams.

In essence, this is an opportunity for students to practice calculating trends with uncertainties to draw conclusions about whether or not there is a trend in hurricane intensity. It follows closely with the IPCC AR4 findings, and is guided so that students will know exactly what they have to do - step by step. Please see the attached document for the bulk of the activity. There are some additional instructor's notes that give a little more background on the concepts involved with confidence intervals and trends. There is also an excel file with all of the necessary data already tabulated for the exercise - so you don't need to go find it yourself unless you want to.

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The students must use crayons or colored pencils to create maps of global precipitation and evaporation rates. One worksheet is provided to each group of students. Then a representative from each group explains their map to the rest of the class, and the instructor shows a similar map from NOAA or NASA.

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This is an interactive website that provides descriptive information and data related to ten key climate indicators. These climate indicators and related resources show global patterns and data that are intuitive and compelling teaching tools.

Students in a Population and Community Ecology class participate in coastal marine research focused on understanding factors determining population sizes and community interactions, particularly in the context of species that appear to be shifting their ranges with climate change. Students participate in all aspects of the research from making observations and collecting data in the field to defining questions, stating hypothesis, designing and completing statistical analysis, and interpreting and presenting results. The outcomes are a research proposal, research paper, and poster presentation. All are intended to be at a level appropriate for use as a writing sample or presentation at undergraduate conferences. Results are incorporated into the ongoing research project led by the course instructor and graduate student teaching assistant.

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Water supply is a problem of worldwide concern: more than 1 billion people do not have reliable access to clean drinking water. Water is a particular problem for the developing world, but scarcity also impacts industrial societies. Water purification and desalination technology can be used to convert brackish ground water or seawater into drinking water. The challenge is to do so sustainably, with minimum cost and energy consumption, and with appropriately accessible technologies.
This subject will survey the state-of-the-art in water purification by desalination and filtration. Fundamental thermodynamic and transport processes which govern the creation of fresh water from seawater and brackish ground water will be developed. The technologies of existing desalination systems will be discussed, and factors which limit the performance or the affordability of these systems will be highlighted. Energy efficiency will be a focus. Nanofiltration and emerging technologies for desalination will be considered. A student project in desalination will involve designing a well-water purification system for a village in Haiti.

This activity represents a culmination project for this unit by means of which students can assess whether the IPCC prediction of increased storminess as an outcome of global warming survives testing. For the previous three weeks students will have conducted several inquiry-based group activities designed to introduce and reinforce fundamental meteorology/climatology concepts. In this 2-day project, students access online AVHRR SST imagery, as well as tabulated numeric data regarding historical North American tropical cyclones, import data into Excel for interpretation and analysis, and submit two group reports.

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This lesson guides students to connect the PBS Adaptation video series on climate adaptation to their own community. Students describe their community, identify climate impacts faced by their community, research how their community is adapting to those impacts, and then create a digital story about what they found.

Students work in pairs to survey seafood items sold in local grocery stores or fish markets, recording whether items are farm-raised or wild caught, fresh, frozen or preserved, as well as country of origin. Students use the Seafood Watch website to research the status of each seafood item (e.g., best choice, good choice or avoid). Class data is compiled in an online or Excel spreadsheet. Students use class data to create bar graphs and pie charts of the data for the different categories. Students turn in individual analyses and answer questions based on class results.

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Spat, What's That? is a lesson on intertidal organism life cycles which explores how different life cycle stages are vulnerable to stressors like predation, ocean acidification, and habitat loss.

In this assignment, students in small groups are asked to interpret and explain a figure depicting one aspect of marine carbon biogeochemistry. Then a representative of each group explains the figure to the class.

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This is a five-activity module that explores the evidence for and impacts of melting glacial ice, with resources from major institutions and scientists who study glaciers -- primarily in Arctic areas. The suite of activities includes both glaciers and melting ice, as well as the impact of melt water downstream. Each activity follows the 5E model of Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, and Evaluation.

This is a unit plan for project-based learning. Students will learn about paleoclimate proxies and their importance in understanding past climates. Students will focus on one region-specific aspect of paleoclimate and research it. The final outcome will be a public product of relevance to the student, school and community.

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This 10 minute video builds connections between topics that are important in climate science such as: the impact of variations in Earth's orbit and wobble on it's axis on climate; how the cores being sampled fit into the bigger climate picture; connecting greenhouse gases to melting ice and sea level changes; the sensitivity of the ice melt / sea level rise relationship; and computer model simulations showing connections between ice sheets and sea level.
The companion website provides resources, an extensive list of activities, teacher guides, posters, and more.

Students will read and summarize an article that details scientific studies on behavioral changes of gray whales. Discussed are their feeding behavior, migratory behavior, and breeding patterns in the Pacific. Students will examine the whales' responses and discuss in small groups how the responses relate to climate change. By interpreting potential links between gray whale behavior and changed ocean conditions, students will be able to infer the ecological role that gray whales play within a community and an ecosystem. Students will summarize the main concepts, scientific evidence, data and observations cited, and justify why gray whales can be considered "ecosystem sentinels."

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This is the first teacher's guide book of the collection “The climate in our hands”, a series of volumes on the topic of climate change. The aim of this guide book is to support teachers in carrying out a range of activities on climate change and the ocean and cryosphere in their classrooms, and targets students from the upper end of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (ages 9 to 15).

In Part A of this activity, students will learn about how sea ice forms and influences ocean currents around the globe. In Part B, they will look at how sea ice thickness changes over time. Finally, in Part C, students will use NSIDC sea ice index data to explore changes in sea ice extent on multiple time scales including months, years, and decades.

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C-ROADS is a simplified version of a climate simulator. Its primary purpose is to help users understand the long-term climate effects (CO2 concentrations, global temperature, sea level rise) of various customized actions to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions, reduce deforestation, and grow more trees. Students can ask multiple, customized what-if questions and understand why the system reacts as it does.