Environmental, Social, Local

Short Description:
Climate Lessons was co-authored by first-year undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while exploring the influences of Earth systems and human systems on climate change and the communities at most risk. The book highlights key interests and insights of current students in their quest to create a better world. Cover: Kris Krüg, World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth - Cochabamba, Bolivia, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Long Description:
Climate Lessons was co-authored by first-year undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while exploring the influences of Earth systems and human systems on climate change and the communities at most risk. The book highlights key interests and insights of current students in their quest to create a better world.

Cover: Kris Krüg, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth – Cochabamba, Bolivia, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Word Count: 47609

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the, if not the most, pressing issues of our times. The problems that it causes range across many social and environmental domains from habitat and species loss and displacement to the more human and social concerns and issues of access to water, sea level rise that affects coastal communities, to economic degradation as a result of the aforementioned and other connected issues such as increased frequency of storms, droughts, wildfires, and the like. We also know that the affects of climate change are not distributed evenly across populations- that many will and do feel the negative effects of this slow developing problem earlier and more intensely than others based on where they are located both geographically and within economic and other socio-cultural hierarchies. We also know that recently, there is a marked effort to begin to move away from simply decrying the horrors of climate change to a continued recognition of those horrors as they exist now and into the future alongside attempts to begin to come to terms with the changing climate and to rethink the ways that our social and environmental relations and communities are organized with an eye toward both adapting to these changes and mitigating further damage. There is, however, much work to be done. This book was co-authored by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while exploring the influences of Earth systems and human systems on climate change and the communities at most risk in an interdisciplinary project-based first year course. This course attempts to bring together knowledge of the science of ecological and climate systems and their changing status with knowledge of the social and communal structures within which these systems are embedded and through which they have been influenced. The book highlights key interests and insights of current students in their quest to think through these issues and to create a better world.

This article provides five strategies for building the foundation for climate science literacy in the elementary grades.

This article discusses ten common misconceptions held by students and adults about climate change.

This resource is a website that is a self-contained, multi-part introduction to how climate models work. The materials include videos and animations about understanding, constructing and applying climate models.

This video explains how scientists construct computer-generated climate models to forecast weather, understand climate, and project climate change. It discusses how different types of climate models can be used and how scientists use computers to build these models.

Earth's climate system is enormously complex, and scientists develop climate models to understand how climate change will play out in different parts of the world. Students play a climate resilience game, and then explore the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report to learn more about how climate scientists handle uncertainty in models. This guide is an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about uncertainty."

In this resource, students play a climate resilience game and then explore the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th Assessment Report to learn more about how climate scientists handle uncertainty in models.

This video offers the audience a specific definition of the term 'global climate models'. It highlights and defines key climate modeling concepts such as the physics of fluids, carbon, nitrogen and water cycles, paleo climate data vs current and projected data vs predictive and real data.

The Climate Momentum Simulation allows users to quickly compare the resulting sea level rise, temperature change, atmospheric CO2, and global CO2 emissions from six different policy options projected out to 2100.

When water utility personnel recognized their groundwater withdrawals were damaging ecosystems in the Tampa Bay area, they found new ways to reduce their dependence on it.

From weeks-long dry spells to extreme precipitation events, farmers face significant challenges in bringing crops to market. Here’s how one grower uses seasonal climate forecasts to increase his chances for success.

This course introduces students to climate studies, including beginnings of the solar system, time scales, and climate in human history. It is offered to both undergraduate and graduate students with different requirements.

This National Weather Service interactive visualization includes outlook maps for different types weather predictions. The map includes temperature and precipitation predictions for up to 3 months out, as well as predictions for tropical hazards, weather hazards, and drought. Further data is easily accessed.

Grounded in the belief that students need to explore climate change for themselves, the high school-level Climate Project course from the OER Project equips students with the knowledge and skills to take action. The course aims to understand the climate crisis by examining facts, impacts, and solutions, fostering civic action, education, and career readiness, and promoting constructive discussion. Through an inquiry-based approach, students interrogate diverse sources, build data and digital literacy skills, and engage with timely materials. Flexible in design, the course can be taught as a comprehensive semester program or through standalone lessons, culminating in projects ranging from climate-focused careers to community civic action.

This interactive visualization is a suite of weather and climate datasets as well as tools with which to manipulate and display them visually.

This is a rich compilation of resources and tools to help decision-makers across the US identify their local climate threats and vulnerabilities and reduce their risks from impacts of climate​ variability and change. As part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan, the toolkit was developed by NOAA in partnership with NASA and other departments and agencies in the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

This Workbook is designed to be used by college faculty and secondary school science teachers. To teach our students and also to share this knowledge with the public and be credible, science teachers at all levels must acquire a good grasp of the science of climate change and must also develop skills for affecting attitudes in and out of the classroom.

In their continued support of climate science education, the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) created these resources to support K-12 teachers of all content areas integrate climate science and climate change into their instruction.  

The goal of this site is to summarize the most important lines of evidence for human-caused climate change. It confronts the stickier questions about uncertainty in our projections, engages in a discussion of risk and risk management, and concludes by presenting different options for taking action. This site sticks to the facts and does not get into politics. We hope that the facts prepare you for more effective conversations with your community about values, trade-offs, politics, and actions.