This is a kinesthetic activity that demonstrates how shortwave radiation emitted by the sun and longwave thermal radiation emitted by the earth interact differently in the atmosphere. It allows students to experience this difference and reinforces their understanding of greenhouse gases as well. Students should have an understanding of shortwave and longwave thermal radiation and of greenhouse gases before doing this activity, but there is a minimal amount of background information about those topics included in this pdf. Additional resources/background info for teachers can be found on the website for the Little Shop of Physics.

This short video from Climate Central explains the technology used to monitor changes in Arctic sea ice. Long-term tracking (since the late 1970's) shows Arctic sea ice has been on a steady decline and this could have significant implications for global temperatures.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson teaches students about the different ways farms and agriculture are being impacted by climate change.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson allows students to explore the impact of climate change on agriculture. They would be able to identify the underlying climatic variables that affect farming systems in different geographies. All resources were fact-checked, and this lesson has passed the science credibility process.

POSITIVES:
-Students are able to learn about specific climate change topics that are interesting to them.
-Students can learn about the many different ways in which climate change impacts agriculture.
-Students can learn from their peers.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 3 of 6 in our 6th-8th grade Climate Change, Food Production, and Food Security unit.
-While not necessary, it is helpful for students to have a general sense of some of the global impacts of climate change.
-You must create a free account to access the Newsela article.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Teachers can assign the Teacher Slideshow on Google Classroom and students can submit their work independently.
-Teachers can group students for the guided research section and assign them level-appropriate resources.
-Teachers can eliminate options in the guided research section if the options are overwhelming.
-Teachers can eliminate the video option in the guided research if they want to exclusively assign readings.
-Teachers can review the teacher slideshow as a class and answer the questions as a whole group assignment.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson teaches students about the different steps in food production and how each step contributes to climate change.

SCIENTIST NOTES: The lesson has students analyze carbon footprint from different sources of food. From production, packaging, transportation, consumption, and disposal, all these activities increase carbon footprint and cause harm to the environment. This lesson inspires students to take urgent action to reduce individual carbon footprint from the food system. All materials are well-sourced and were thoroughly fact-checked to ascertain their credibility. Thus, this lesson is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-Students are able to connect climate change to their everyday life by thinking about what foods they eat and how they may impact the planet.
-Students are able to analyze complex data in a way that is highly scaffolded and supported.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 2 of 6 in our 6th-8th grade Climate Change, Food Production, and Food Security unit.
-Students should be able to read a bar graph that has a key.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Teachers can assign the Teacher Slideshow on Google Classroom and students can submit their work independently.
-For the Data Explorer section, teachers can use an open-ended version that has broad questions or a guided version that has more specific questions to help students identify trends.
-Teachers can eliminate options in the guided research section if the options are overwhelming.
-Teachers can review the Teacher Slideshow as a class and answer the questions as a whole group assignment.

Students investigate how sea levels might rise when ice sheets and ice caps melt. By constructing a pair of models, students can observe the effects of ice melt in two different situations.

In this design challenge lesson, students examine their school food system and develop an investigation about food waste in order to know what should change.

This video succinctly explains the mechanism of the natural greenhouse effect and the cause of global climate change (anthropogenic global warming). It is short, basic, and to the point. It's also available in 12 languages!

This short video, is the fifth in the National Academies Climate Change, Lines of Evidence series. It focuses on greenhouse gases, climate forcing (natural and human-caused), and global energy balance.

In this activity, students use Google Earth and team up with fictional students in Chersky, Russia to investigate possible causes of thawing permafrost in Siberia and other Arctic regions. Students explore the nature of permafrost and what the effects of thawing permafrost mean both locally and globally. Next, students use a spreadsheet to explore soil temperature data from permafrost boreholes and surface air temperature datasets from in and around the Chersky region for a 50-year time span.

This video segment adapted from KET's Where the River Bends demonstrates how climate change and glacier movement during the Ice Ages destroyed the old Teays River and created the Ohio River, Kentucky's northern border.

In this activity, students use the GLOBE Student Data Archive and visualizations to explore changes in regional and seasonal temperature patterns.

This short video reviews how nations and individuals can work together to reduce the emission of CO2. It discusses strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (energy conservation, renewable energies, change in energy use) and the role that government can play in this process.

This set of three videos illustrates how math is used in satellite data analysis. The videos feature NASA senior climate scientist Claire Parkinson. Parkinson explains how the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers are measured from satellite data and how math is used to determine trends in the data. In the first video, she leads viewers from satellite data collection through obtaining a time series of monthly average sea ice extents for November 1978 – December 2012, for the Arctic and Antarctic. In the second video, she begins with the time series from the first video, removes the seasonal cycle by calculating yearly averages, and proceeds to calculate the slopes of the lines to get trends in the data, revealing decreasing sea ice coverage in the Arctic and increasing sea ice coverage in the Antarctic. In the third video, she uses a more advanced technique to remove the seasonal cycle and shows that the trends are close to the same, whichever method is used. She emphasizes the power of math and that the techniques shown for satellite sea ice data can also be applied to a wide range of data sets.

In this problem-based learning module, students research and report on Hurricane Katrina, using an earth systems science analysis approach.

In this activity, students learn how people prepared for and then dealt during a hurricane by analyzing news headlines about Hurricane Florence (2018). Then they analyze data about the amount of damage that different categories of hurricanes cause, learning that even low category storms are able to cause damage.

In this activity, students use maps and data to learn about where and how hurricanes form and possible correlations with climate change affecting their strength.

This video discusses impacts that the Eastern US is experiencing due to climate change. It describes the seasonal shifts that may affect tourism in New England, extreme heat in the Southeast, how rising sea level affects coastal areas, changes in hurricane intensity, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

This video features Katharine Hayhoe presenting a lively discussion of impacts that the Midwestern US is experiencing due to climate change. It steps through evidence for how climate change is affecting agriculture, tourism, drought and flood, water cycles and freshwater availability, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

This video features research conducted at University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, which studies isotopes of hydrogen trapped in ice cores to understand climate changes in the past.

This diagram uses the metaphor of an iceberg to demonstrate the idea of visible vs hidden as it relates to Earth science phenomena. This teaching strategy helps students to see beyond the obvious and to develop their awareness of the underlying causes, relationships, and/or conditions that can contribute to phenomenological events. It also provides a framework for digging deeper into phenomena-driven lessons in Earth Science.