C-ROADS is a simplified version of a climate simulator. Its primary purpose is to help users understand the long-term climate effects (CO2 concentrations, global temperature, sea level rise) of various customized actions to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions, reduce deforestation, and grow more trees. Students can ask multiple, customized what-if questions and understand why the system reacts as it does.

This video focuses on animals that have quickly evolved in order to meet their needs from the impacts of climate change.

This PBS video shows how Klaus Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia University, is trying to tackle the problem of rising atmospheric CO2 levels by using an idea inspired by his daughter's 8th-grade science fair project. The video examines the idea of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere via a passive chemical process.

In this learning activity, students use a web-based carbon calculator to determine their carbon footprint on the basis of their personal and household habits and choices. Students identify which personal activities and household choices produce the most CO2 emissions, compare their carbon footprint to the U.S. and global averages, and identify lifestyle changes they can make to reduce their footprint.

This video features a short animated sequence that illustrates the difference between young and old carbon released into the atmosphere from the consumption of food (young carbon) and the burning of fossil fuels (old carbon).

In this activity, students develop concept maps of the carbon cycle through a die-rolling game that simulates carbon reservoirs and fluxes. By the end of this activity, students should be able to describe and explain how the carbon cycle has changed in the last 250 years.

Students will learn that there is a finite amount of carbon on earth, which moves around in the environment, from one place to another. Activity is scaleable from elementary to high school with options to introduce advanced content. Wrap up includes role playing the carbon cycle with the addition of human influences (e.g. burning of fossil fuels). Activity can be done in classroom or outside, includes working in a group and role playing. Grades 3-12. This resources is part of the Our Changing Ocean and Estuaries Series

In this activity, students use a physical model to learn the basics of photosynthesis and respiration within the carbon cycle.

In this activity, students work in groups, plotting carbon dioxide concentrations over time on overheads and estimating the rate of change over five years. Stacked together, the overheads for the whole class show an increase on carbon dioxide over five years and annual variation driven by photosynthesis. This exercise enables students to practice basic quantitative skills and understand how important sampling intervals can be when studying changes over time. A goal is to see how small sample size may give incomplete picture of data.

This interactive visualization explains the chemical relationship between carbon dioxide, shell building, and ocean acidification.

This video features a number of different climate scientists describing the effects of the increasing amount of carbon dioxide on global climate and proposing a series of solutions to mitigate these effects. Video addresses health problems and other costs to humans associated with climate change.

Students play the role of carbon atoms to learn about the carbon cycle and how it is changing. Students create two carbon cycle diagramsâvisual models of the cycle before and after the Industrial Revolution. They reflect on the game and how scientists believe humans are impacting this critical Earth system.

This series of two lessons uses cutting-edge scientific research on the effects of climate change on communities in the intertidal. Through a combination of a dynamic presentation and several videos, students are introduced to the effects of climate change on the ocean (ocean acidification and temperature increase) and what is known about how ocean organisms are affected. Then students read and interpret graphs and construct a scientific explanation based on data from this research.

In this activity, student teams research and develop a proposal to decrease the carbon footprint of their city's/town's public transportation system and then prepare a report that explains why their transportation plan is the best for their community.

This game is an expansion on the popular board game Catan, it adapts the regular Catan game to become a game about sustainability and climate change. It's a neat idea, but teachers must already own the game and know how to play it.

This game-based learning would be great for after-school activities, environmental clubs, or a 'free' period in school. The amount of setup needed to get the game going and explain the rules may be too involved for regular classroom use.

Students model the effect of greenhouse gases on Earth's atmosphere. They find that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are uniquely shaped to catch and pass on infrared radiation, and so they are responsible for the warmth we enjoy on Earth. The children discuss how the addition of greenhouse gases by human activities leads to further warming and what steps we can take to slow it.

This activity engages learners in exploring the impact of climate change on arctic sea ice in the Bering Sea. They graph and analyze sea ice extent data, conduct a lab on thermal expansion of water, and then observe how a scientist collects long-term data on a bird population.

Students run a simplified computer model to explore how climate conditions can affect caribou, the most abundant grazing animal in the Arctic.

This animation illustrates how the hardiness zones for plants have changed between 1990 and 2006 based data from 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the continental United States.

In this activity, students research changes to the environment in the Arctic/Bering Sea over time using oral and photographic histories. Developed for Alaska Native students, this activity can be customized for other regions.