CLEAN: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network
CLEAN: The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network supports educators in building climate literacy as outlined in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program framework, “Essential Principles of Climate Literacy” by providing a collection of educational resources that facilitate learning about climate issues. The CLEAN collection is a free online database of ~1,000 free, peer-reviewed, and ready-to-use educational resources for teaching elementary, middle, high school, and undergraduate students about climate and energy. The collection contains activities, demonstrations, experiments, visualizations, and videos—everything you need to create data-rich and authentic lessons on climate and energy. Climate and energy topics include the climate system, causes of climate change, measuring and modeling climate, impacts of climate change, human responses and solutions to climate change, energy use, mental health, environmental justice, and many more. Resources are rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and pedagogic relevancy, making the CLEAN collection of high enough quality to steward the NOAA Teaching Climate database.
Students will learn and research who is culpable in climate change by …
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.
This is the seventh of nine lessons in the 'Visualizing and Understanding …
This is the seventh of nine lessons in the 'Visualizing and Understanding the Science of Climate Change' website. This lesson addresses climate feedback loops and how these loops help drive and regulate Earth's unique climate system.
This documentary film takes the viewer on a virtual trip around the …
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.
This teaching activity is an introduction to how ice cores from the …
This teaching activity is an introduction to how ice cores from the cryosphere are used as indicators and record-keepers of climate change as well as how climate change will affect the cryosphere.
This activity focuses on reconstructing the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as an …
This activity focuses on reconstructing the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as an example of a relatively abrupt global warming period. Students access Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) sediment core data with Virtual Ocean software in order to display relevant marine sediments and their biostratigraphy.
This resource is a website that is a self-contained, multi-part introduction to …
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, …
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.
In this resource, students play a climate resilience game and then explore …
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 …
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 …
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.
Students learn about the climate zones of the world by interpreting graphed …
Students learn about the climate zones of the world by interpreting graphed data, identifying climate zones described in postcards, and deciding what they should pack to visit each of the locations described in the postcards.
This National Weather Service interactive visualization includes outlook maps for different types …
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.
This is a rich compilation of resources and tools to help decision-makers …
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 video is part of the Climate Science in a Nutshell video …
This video is part of the Climate Science in a Nutshell video series. This short video looks at the effects of climate change happening right now around the globe, including: more extreme weather events, droughts, forest fires, land use changes, altered ranges of disease-carrying insects, and the loss of some agricultural products. It concludes with a discussion of the differences between weather, climate variability, and climate change.
This video is part of the Climate Science in a Nutshell series. …
This video is part of the Climate Science in a Nutshell series. This short, animated video looks at evidence of a rapidly warming planet. It discusses how air bubbles in ice cores can be used to estimate Earth's average air temperature for thousands of years and how direct measurements document air temperatures from 1880.
This short video discusses where carbon dioxide, the gas that is mainly …
This short video discusses where carbon dioxide, the gas that is mainly responsible for warming up our planet and changing the climate, comes from. It discusses how the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide comes directly from the burning of fossil fuels and indirectly from the human need for energy.
This short video makes the case that rapid climate change affects the …
This short video makes the case that rapid climate change affects the whole planet, but individuals can make a difference and make their carbon footprint smaller. Common suggestions are identified for young children to consciously consider what they can do.
This is a simulation that illustrates how temperature will be affected by …
This is a simulation that illustrates how temperature will be affected by global CO2 emission trajectories. It addresses the issue that even if global emissions begin to decrease, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will continue to increase, resulting in increased global temperatures.
This series of four animations shows how some of the key indicators …
This series of four animations shows how some of the key indicators of climate change (average global temperature, sea level, sea ice extent, carbon emissions) have changed in Earth's recent history.
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