This activity covers the role that the oceans may play in climate change and how climate change may affect the oceans. It is lesson 8 in a nine-lesson module Visualizing and Understanding the Science of Climate Change.

This unit consists of seven distinct activities that teach climate change, the water cycle, and the effects of the changing climate on water resources through the use of games, science experiments, investigations, role-playing, research, and creating a final project to showcase learning.

This animation depicts global surface warming as simulated by NCAR's Community Climate System Model (CCSM) Version 3. It shows the temperature anomalies relative to the end of the 19th century, both over the entire globe and as a global average. The model shows the temporary cooling effects during 5 major volcanic eruptions and estimates future temperature trends based on different amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

This PBS video focuses on sea level rise in Norfolk, Virginia and how the residents are managing the logistical, financial and political implications. Science journalists who have been studying Norfolk's rising sea level problems are interviewed, as well as local residents who are being impacted.

United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's speech to the U.S. Senate floor about the detrimental effects carbon pollution will have upon the environment of New Hampshire and the rest of the world.

EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGES. It always has and always will. However, an extensive and growing body of scientific evidence indicates that human activities—including the burning of fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy, clearing of forested lands for agriculture, and raising livestock—are now the primary force driving change in the Earth’s climate system. This report describes how the climate of northern New Hampshire has changed over the past century and how the future climate of the region will be affected by a warmer planet due to human activities.

EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGES. It always has and always will. However, an extensive and growing body of scientific evidence indicates that human activities—including the burning of fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy, clearing of forested lands for agriculture, and raising livestock—are now the primary force driving change in the Earth’s climate system. This report describes how the climate of southern New Hampshire has changed over the past century and how the future climate of the region will be affected by a warmer planet due to human activities.

This video addresses how climate change is affecting the biomes and ecosystems in the US Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean Islands. It also highlights the impacts on infrastructure and defines key climate science terms.

Students will learn and research who is culpable in climate change by participating in a role-playing trial. Students represent different groups (i.e. US government, consumers, oil and coal industry) and must present a case. Students can also act as a jury, and the teacher will be the prosecutor.

After a butterfly species disappeared from a location where it had been found for many years, conservation professionals accessed climate projections to identify potential habitat for its recovery.

This documentary film takes the viewer on a virtual trip around the world to visit communities in different countries (Asia, Africa, Central America, Australia) taking action on climate change. The documentary weaves together nine inspiring stories, showing that action on climate change is creating jobs, improving lives and turning dreams of a better future into reality.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson focuses on how climate change impacts agriculture. Students focus on how heat extremes and changes in precipitation will affect crop yields.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson details ways that climate change can affect farmers — both those who grow plants and those who take care of cattle. The provided video links to more information from Rutgers University. This lesson also has students think about how changes in temperature and precipitation affect crops and leads them in designing an experiment to test their ideas. This resource is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-Students are actively engaged in how differences in temperature and precipitation may affect crops grown in New Jersey.
-Students practice the skill of designing a scientific investigation.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This lesson requires one block of 50 minutes for setting up the experiments and writing hypotheses. Students will need to observe their plants growing every few days. The students should have a final 50-minute block to write up the results of their experiment.
-Teachers should have the supplies to grow the crops in the classroom, including:
-Seeds
-Pots
-Soil
-Access to a water source
-Access to a window or heat lamps or ability to plant outside
-Teachers should have ways to control water. Students can individually water their own plants with either more or less water.
-The type of seed that could be used in the classroom is radishes.
-It is easy to grow, germinates relatively quickly and can be grown inside to control the weather conditions for the variables in the experiment.
-If the school has an outdoor garden, the radishes can be planted outside in the spring or fall.
-Peas are another recommended option.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Students may need help with designing the experiment. The teacher can assign specific hypotheses to students in order to help facilitate the investigation.
-If materials are difficult to acquire, a non-lab resource could be Food and Farming.

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.

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 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.