Featured Resources

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Impacts of the World Climate Simulation

Climate Interactive Webinar Series
January 17, 2017

Join to learn more about our research on the individual impact of the ...

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Sharing the Climate Story with Young Learners Through Elementary GLOBE

NOAA Climate Stewards Webinar Series
February 6, 2017

NOAA's Climate Stewards Education Project is pleased to welcome Lisa Gardiner and Becca Hatheway from the UCAR Center for Science Education, Dr. Diane Stanitski, Deputy Director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division, and Jessica Taylor, NASA Lead...

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Interpreting Climate Change Virtual Course

Virtual Classroom—Distance Learning Opportunity
January 31, 2017

Want to learn how to better communicate climate change to your audiences? This free three-day virtual course includes webex plenary sessions, activities, and group discussions to enable interpreters to develop effective...

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Leading the World Energy Simulation with Groups

Climate Interactive Webinar Series
January 24, 2017

We will introduce the ...

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Teaching Climate Literacy

  • Climate and energy are complex topics. There are many ways to approach climate and energy depending on the grade level, course topics and instructional method.

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Professional Development

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Jan
31

Interpreting Climate Change Virtual Course

February 28-March 2, 2017          12:00pm-5:00pm ET daily

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National Climate Assessment Teaching Resources

  • Explore a series of guides for educators that focus on the regional chapters of the Assessment Report, helping to unpack the key messages of each region and point to related, high-quality online resources.

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Case Studies

Unique and diverse youth programming models and student-driven initiatives that are advancing place-based climate solutions.

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Events

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Blog

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Educational Resources

Compact Fluorescent and LED Cost-Benefit Analysis

In this activity, students collect data and analyze the cost of using energy in their homes and investigate one method of reducing energy use.

Climate Change, After the Storm (Unit 2)

This 3-activity sequence addresses the question: "To what extent should coastal communities build or rebuild?" The activity uses social science and geoscience data to prepare an evidence-based response to the question, in targeted US coastal communities.

The Findings from Mauna Loa

This activity involves plotting and comparing monthly data on atmospheric C02 concentrations over two years, as recorded in Mauna Loa and the South Pole, and postulating reasons for differences in their seasonal patterns.

Ocean Impacts on an El NiÃo Event

This lesson explores El NiÃo by looking at sea surface temperature, sea surface height, and wind vectors in order to seek out any correlations there may be among these three variables using the My NASA Data Live Access Server.

What are our energy choices? Activity 1: Electricity: sources and challenges

This activity is the first of five in the High Adventure Science Energy module and focuses on sources of electricity in the US by state as well as consumption in the US by sector and globally per capita.

World Climate: Climate Change Negotiations Game

This simulation provides scenarios for exploring the principles of climate dynamics from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Chicago fights extreme urban heat with greener ideas

As a segment in PBS's Coping with Climate Change series, Hari Sreenivasan reports on the actions the city of Chicago is taking to mitigate climate change in an urban landscape.

Annual Arctic Sea ice Minimum 1979-2015 with Area Graph

This series of visualizations show the annual Arctic sea ice minimum from 1979 to 2015. The decrease in Arctic sea ice over time is shown in an animation and a graph plotted simultaneously, but can be parsed so that the change in sea ice area can be shown without the graph.

Yale Climate Opinion Maps

This visualization focuses on public acceptance of climate science. The set of interactive maps illustrates public opinion on a variety of climate beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support. The data is from the Yale Project on Climate Communication.

What's Happening to Our Climate: Natural Factors Cannot Explain the Recent Warming

This classroom resource is a combination of 3 visualizations and accompanying text that illustrate how 3 key natural phenomena - cyclical changes in solar energy output, major volcanic eruptions over the last century, and El Nino/Nina cycles - are insufficient to explain recent global warming.

AAAS - Global Climate Change video

This video features residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, plus environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert and scientist John Holdren, exploring the human impacts of global climate change.

El NiÃo and La NiÃa Explained

This short video illustrates the phenomena of El NiÃo and La NiÃa: their relationships to tradewinds and surface water temperatures, and their effects on precipitation in North America.

Yale Climate Opinion Maps

This visualization focuses on public acceptance of climate science. The set of interactive maps illustrates public opinion on a variety of climate beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support. The data is from the Yale Project on Climate Communication.

If All the Ice Melted

This visualization is a collection of maps, by continent, that project the impact on coastlines of a 216-foot rise in sea level, which is assumed to be the result of melting all the land ice on Earth.

Graphing Ocean Acidification

This applet is an ocean acidification grapher that allows user to plot changes in atmospheric C02 against ocean pH, from 1988 to 2009, in the central North Pacific.

Earth: an animated map of global wind and weather

This animation depicts real-time wind speed and direction at selected heights above Earth's surface, ocean surface currents, and ocean surface temperatures and anomalies.

Sea Level Rise: Threatened Areas Maps

This interactive tool allows viewers to explore, by county, the areas of California threatened by a rise in sea level through this century.

NOAA Sea Level Trends

The NOAA Sea Level Trends map illustrates U.S. regional and some international trends in sea level, with arrows representing the direction and magnitude of change. Students can investigate sea level changes around the U.S.

Biofuels/Biomass Cellulose Lab

In this lab activity, students investigate how to prepare a biofuel source for conversion to a combustible product. The activity models how raw materials are refined to process liquid fuels.

Thermal Expansion and Sea Level Rise

In this short but effective demonstration/experiment, students investigate how thermal expansion of water might affect sea level.

Bioprospecting for cellulose-degrading microbes

This is a long-term inquiry activity in which students investigate locations they believe harbor cellulose-digesting microbes, collect samples, isolate them on selective media, and screen them for cellulase activity. These novel microbes may be useful for the production of cellulosic ethanol.

Fermentation in a Bag

This is a hands-on inquiry activity using zip-lock plastic bags that allows students to observe the process of fermentation and the challenge of producing ethanol from cellulosic sources. Students are asked to predict outcomes and check their observations with their predictions.

Fermentation Challenge: Making Ethanol from Cellulose

This hands-on activity introduces students to the process of fermenting different carbohydrate sources into ethanol. Teachers demonstrate yeasts' inability to metabolize certain food sources.

Life Cycle Assessment of Biofuels 101

In this activity, students conduct a life cycle assessment of energy used and produced in ethanol production, and a life cycle assessment of carbon dioxide used and produced in ethanol production.