Through this set of lessons, students learn about the impacts of water shortages due to drought, make connections to climate patterns, and explore community resiliency solutions. The lessons engage students in evaluating solutions for a particular case study community. Students will need to do additional research on solutions, but by the end of the lesson, students will be able to articulate how drought, although a localized problem, has far-reaching impacts, and to suggest solutions to a problem that is projected to intensify as the climate continues to change.

This series of visualizations is part of a rich multi-agency effort to showcase the usefulness of open data (i.e., data provided in a discoverable, sharable, and machine-readable format) by exploring the 16-year drought as of 2016 and its effects on the Colorado River Basin.

Using US Drought Monitor data and its classification system, this interactive tool tracks drought in the continental US by county, from 2000 to the present.

Students first learn about the complexities of Earth's climate system and the different factors contributing to Earth's energy balance. Then, students categorize the factors that influence climate as warming or cooling factors. Finally, students design art pieces to depict the science behind Earth's climate system and share these artistic creations with families and communities.

This video illustrates the environmental challenges and achievements since Earth Day was established in 1970. It can be used as an extension or engagement resource. However, it would need to be carefully framed with the objectives of the lesson.

Using real data, this animated video provides numerous facts comparing human behaviors and Earth characteristics related to climate change through time - from the first Earth Day in 1970, to the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020.

This visualization provides an informative summary of the quarterly seasonal global weather and climate using the 3-D Science on a Sphere format. These video summaries use animations of recent NOAA data and an engaging commentary to review the climate highlights of the past 4 seasons. Topics include, El Nino/La Nina, temperature trends, extreme weather, and emerging climate research.

This monthly bulletin and animation provides regular and reliable visualizations of world weather and climate events of the previous month using NOAA data. Archives are available from October 2011 to present.

This video segment adapted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center discusses how a drought can have negative effects locally, for example by increasing the number of forest fires, and also globally, for example by impacting air quality thousands of miles away.

In this activity, students are guided through graphs of surface air temperature anomaly data and Vostok ice core data to illustrate how scientists use these data to develop the basis for modeling how climate is likely to change in the future.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson is an exploration of climate change data, including greenhouse gases, global temperature, ice melt, and sea level rise.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson lets students explore almost real-time data on the ways human-caused global warming is disrupting different earth systems. All of the external links use the highest quality data available and are considered reputable sources. This lesson has passed our science quality assessment.

POSITIVES:
-This lesson is all about curiosity and exploration. Students make meaning from all of this data collectively. This should be a very social activity as students share noticings, wonderings, and realizations with each other.
-This can be a very hands-off lesson, as students guide their own learning and discussion.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-You must copy the Student Slideshow, share it with your students, and grant them editing rights. They will be writing in the slideshow during the lesson.
-The data from these sources is always being updated.
-There are other greenhouse gases that students will not explore. These are the fluorinated gases, "a family of man-made gases used in a range of industrial applications." (Source: EU Commission)

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Seeing the extent of these numbers might cause feelings of anxiety, sadness, anger, despair, or surprise in some students. Make sure to remind them that those feelings are normal and natural. Sharing those feelings with the class usually helps students feel better. Encourage students to share their honest reactions.
-This exploration and these discussions might naturally lead into the “What can we do about it?” discussion.
-These graphs are all unsustainable. It might be useful to use these graphs to better explain the concept of sustainability to the students.
-Students should feel free to conduct research on their own to better understand their resources. For example, students can research sources of atmospheric nitrous oxide.
-It is a good thing if students have more questions leaving this class than when they entered.

Students explore their own Ecological Footprint in the context of how many Earths it would take if everyone used the same amount of resources they did. They compare this to the Ecological Footprint of individuals in other parts of the world and to the Ecological footprint of a family member when they were the student's age.

This video focuses on the conifer forest in Alaska to explore the carbon cycle and how the forest responds to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. Topics addressed in the video include wildfires, reflectivity, and the role of permafrost in the global carbon cycle.

Students are charged with thinking about what it takes to 'do science'. They are introduced to the science of dendrochronology and learn how tree-ring science is executed.

This video illustrates how atmospheric particles, or aerosols (such as black carbon, sulfates, dust, fog), can affect the energy balance of Earth regionally, and the implications for surface temperature warming and cooling.

This video shows 15 years of data obtained via Polar-orbiting satellites that are able to detect subtle differences in ocean color, allowing scientists to see where there are higher concentrations of phytoplankton - a proxy for the concentration of chlorophyll in the ocean.

This video addresses the importance of efficiency in providing power to an increasingly large global population.

This National Geographic video explains the origins of the El NiÃo Southern Oscillation using animations and shows the impacts on humans, wildlife and habitat, particularly in the United States.

This short video illustrates the phenomena of El NiÃo and La NiÃa: their relationships to tradewinds and surface water temperatures, and their effects on precipitation in North America.

This resource is designed as a module with a storybook or web story, and four activities. In the storybook, the GLOBE Kids investigate colors in the sky and learn how air pollution affects sky color and our health. Learning activities engage students in describing sky color and conditions in the atmosphere, creating a model to learn how sky color and visibility are affected by aerosols, using prisms to explore properties of light and colors, and collecting aerosol samples.