This article describes the ongoing research on the possible presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa. It includes satellite images of Europa, scientific illustrations, and extensive text. It also discusses similar research being done on Lake Vostok in Antarctica. It also offers a variety of related links. Full description.

The National Weather and Climate Center presents snowpack data from snow courses and SNOTEL sites in the western United States as graphs and color-contoured maps. Historical and real-time data on depth of snowpack, snow-water-equivalence, and forecasts are available for individual sites and entire drainage basins. The site also includes information about how scientists collect SNOTEL data. Full description.

This site is specifically designed for teachers, and in addition to a collection of activities, provides links to various sites with water information. These include other Environment Canada sites, other Federal Departments in Canada, Provincial Governments, Agencies, colleges and universities, and International Organizations. The site also offers publications that can be obtained free of charge using ... Full description.

Students will utilize the Internet to take a virtual field trip to visit a glacier and discover what physical effects glaciers have on the land. They will also have the opportunity to virtually visit Vermont and trace the pictorial history of how a whale's fossils were found there. The site also contains a student worksheet for their visual field trip. The site also provides an explanation of the ... Full description.

This site is all about snow crystals and snowflakes. The many facets of snow crystals are described here, along with attempts to understand their formation. This site includes collections of super-high-resolution snow crystal photos, as well as links to learn about snow crystal classifications and how to make snow crystal fossils. Included in the study of how snow crystals form, these researchers ... Full description.

NSIDC offers data and information about the cryosphere; that portion of the Earth where water is in solid form, typically snow or ice. Topics include snow, glaciers, permafrost, sea ice, news and features, and others. The State of the Cryosphere section provides an overview of the status of snow and ice as indicators of climate change. An image and photo gallery provides historic photographs and satellite ... Full description.

This lesson plan provides instruction to teachers for creating a glacier in the classroom to demonstrate how glaciation affects landforms. Learning objectives include student understanding that as glaciers move, they create a variety of patterns on landforms by a process called glacial scraping, that the scraping patterns left by a glacier depend on how the glacier moved over the landform, and that ... Full description.

In this activity, students download NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of the Martian polar ice caps in summer and winter. Using image processing techniques, students measure and compare various images of the changing Martian and Earth polar ice caps. By completing this activity, they will understand that the sizes of the polar ice caps on Earth and Mars depend on the lengths of the seasons. ... Full description.

Students investigate the challenges of living and working in Antarctica and the technologies that help researchers meet those challenges. This six-day unit includes: teacher tools (downloadable readings, breakdowns of tasks, teacher strategies, grading sheet and rubric), an online activity (students review the preparation materials given to researchers traveling to Antarctica), classroom activities ... Full description.

The Antarctic ice sheet changes in size over the course of a year. When it is summer in the southern hemisphere, the ice sheet decreases in size. As the ice sheet melts, it releases fresh water into the ocean. In the southern winter (our summer), the ice refreezes, drawing fresh water out of the surrounding ocean, leaving the salt behind. These seasonal changes in the ice sheet are examined in this ... Full description.