Water is one of Earth's most unique and valuable resources. Thus, the distribution of water on Earth is a very important factor in the evaluation of global climate and its impact on life. In this lesson, students will use historical satellite data to examine precipitable water -- a measure of the water available in the atmosphere from evaporation (in the form of water vapor). They will then compare ... Full description.

Students will make predictions by linking current scientific satellite data to concerns about global climate change. Using maps of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean surface winds, students will learn how differential heating of Earth results in circulation patterns in the atmosphere and oceans that globally distribute the heat. Students will learn the relationship between the rotation of Earth ... Full description.

Back in the days of Christopher Columbus, voyages made across bodies of water were dependent upon winds and currents to drive the sailing ships. Thus good navigation routes were often determined by prevailing weather conditions such as the Trade Winds, and then discovered by explorers. In this lesson, students will explore the wind climatology for the Atlantic Ocean basin (as determined by satellite ... Full description.

Students often hear that winters were colder or had more snow in the past. This activity will help them to determine if this is a true or accurate statement for their location. Students will access historic weather information from NOAA and NASA internet resources. They will determine changes in average temperatures, precipitation and cloud cover over time from data and relate global changes to local ... Full description.

El Nino and La Nina are important temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean. In this lesson, students will create maps and line graphs of data to compare the effects of El Nino and La Nina at two different longitudinal locations, but at the same latitude, using sea surface temperature and precipitation from real satellite data. Full description.

In this lesson, students will play the role of a senior science advisor for the Louisiana Environmental Agency. Due to the recent damaging and deadly hurricanes during 2005 (i.e., Hurricane Katrina) through 2008, they, along with their team of climatologists, meteorologists, and environmental impact experts, have been tasked to study the danger of future tropical storms. Specifically, they will investigate ... Full description.

In recent years more and more attention has been paid to the Earth's climate and how it is evolving. When studying hurricanes it is important to understand that, for a hurricane to grow, warm water is an absolute necessity. So if the Earth continues to warm, what does that mean for hurricanes and their intensity? In this lesson, the student will look at past hurricane data by researching the intensity ... Full description.

Many claims have been made about the evidence for or against global warming, yet whether the interpretation of the data points leans towards fact or fiction, a more descriptive term to use is global climate change. The most hard-hit area where global climate change is apparent is within the Arctic Circle. In this lesson, students will explore data from the Arctic, develop relationships between parameters ... Full description.

The Sun heats the Earth, but the Earth also emits some of the heat back into space. The net amount of energy determines not only seasonal weather, but also climate trends. According to NOAA, monthly snow and ice amounts have declined over the past decade. By matching maps of snow and ice amounts with maps of net radiation flux for the same time frame, this lesson will give students the opportunity ... Full description.

This easy but effective lesson uses NASA CERES satellite percent coverage surface data along with a world map and asks students to locate landmasses and bodies of water at Earth's Equator. Students will map locations using latitude and longitude coordinates. Using the microset of satellite data included with the lesson to investigate surface characteristics, students will apply percentage to determine ... Full description.