This site provides information on the many aspects of the study of the sea surface from space. Measuring the ocean surface topography provides information for studying global ocean circulation and the oceans heat budget. Regular scanning of the ocean surface to maintain a database of ocean surface topography can help predict short-term changes in weather and longer-term patterns of climate. Educational ... Full description.

In this activity, students will use pre-marked paper strips to simulate tree-ring core samples to help them understand that data for past climate changes can be gathered from sources beyond long-term weather observations. Students will be able to recognize the direct impact of climate on annual tree growth patterns. The student guide has an overall description of the activity, a list of materials, ... Full description.

In this activity students will simulate climate variability and come to understand that long-term climate averages are the result of significant annual climate variability. After this activity students will understand that long-term climate averages are the result of significant annual climate variability and be able to express the fact that random climate variability makes detecting climate change ... Full description.

The MODIS instrument, flying aboard NASAs Terra and Aqua satellites, measures how much solar radiation is reflected by the Earths surface almost every day over the entire planet. Zooming in on Africas Sahara Desert and the Arabian Peninsula, MODIS observed considerable variability in reflectance across the region-from the darkest volcanic terrains to the brightest sand. This matches specific soil ... Full description.

This article from the American Institute of Physics discusses the evolution of scientific views about global climate change. The history of this evolution gives a good example of the stepwise fashion in which science commonly proceeds, contrary to the familiar heroic myths of discoveries springing forth in an instant. The history also suggests why, as the NAS committee worried, most people still fail ... Full description.

In this activity, students learn about efforts to study Earth's climatic history for the last 250,000 years by drilling into the Greenland Ice Sheet and examining ice cores. They will answer questions about the project, examine a cross section of the ice sheet and a stratigraphic column of the ice core, study photographs of field activities, and answer questions about climatic data derived from the ... Full description.

This collection of graphic images, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, provides visual information on climate change issues that makes it possible to grasp complex facts more quickly and fully than would be possible through written text alone. The images consist of posters, maps, graphs, and flow charts that present introductory material on climate change, ... Full description.

This activity will provide students with first hand knowledge of local weather changes and how they relates to local climates. After this activity students will understand the general distinctions between weather and climate, that daily weather measurements are highly variable compared to long-term climate data, and appreciate the difficulty of identifying climate trends based on limited data. The ... Full description.

In this activity, students use real data on fossil pollen from a lake in Washington State to study climate change. Working in teams, they separate simulated pollen grains from 'sediment samples', identify them, and determine what climate the plants that produced the pollen grains might have lived in. They will then graph their data and discuss the results. Information cards on the plants, data cards ... Full description.

In this activity, students plot data on the concentrations of various greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere and look for trends. They will learn that greenhouse gases allow the Sun's light to pass through them to the surface of Earth, but also absorb some of the infrared radiation from Earth's surface. Students will discover that constructing graphs allows them to more easily spot trends in the data ... Full description.