Summary: Students will use situation cards to review different examples of weather and climate. Then, students will have the opportunity to visit different data stations. Each station contains data (global, national, or local) that will be analyzed to see whether or not it supports the phenomenon of climate change.
Lesson Components:
Activity
Students will...
Indiana State Standard Addressed (*8.ESS.1)
“Climate OR Weather?” Situation Cards
Review the difference between climate and weather
SEPS.6
Data Stations
Analyze local, state, national and global climate data
Other Helpful Lesson-Specific Info: Scientists from all over the world have collected and analyzed massive amounts of data. Some of the data have a fairly straightforward relationship to climate change: temperature, water levels, area of ice, and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Others are less direct, but still serve as evidence of a changing climate. For example, ice cores tell us about what carbon dioxide levels were thousands of years ago, and tree rings and pollen samples tell us about past climates.
The goal of this lesson is for students to get their hands on some of this data because the data speaks for itself. In reviewing global, national, regional and local data, the data also starts to demonstrate how complicated of a topic climate change is. Climate is changing, but it is changing in dramatically different ways in different places.
Lesson Set-Up:PLEASE ALLOW ADEQUATE SET-UP TIME for the Data Dive Activity. Teachers will probably need 20 minutes of prep in addition to their homework for this lesson to run smoothly. It’s recommended that students have access to updated information. Some stations require that teachers set up a device with a specific website already pulled up for students to access during the Data Dive. Other stations are prepped in the backpack for the teacher and ready to use. Teachers should have Data Dive packets copied.
“Climate OR Weather?” Situation Cards
Purpose: In order for students to study “climate change,” they first need to have a grip on what climate is. It’s common for students to confuse climate with weather.
Procedure:
As students enter the classroom, have them draw a situation card from the bucket.
Once class starts, explain that on each person’s card is a situation. It is either an example of climate or an example of weather.
What’s the difference between climate and weather?
GOAL: climate is a pattern of weather in an area over an extended period of time. It’s why we can expect certain kinds of weather in different seasons. Weather is what actually happens throughout the day though. It’s a small glimpse in time.
Have students line-up in alphabetical order around the room (each card is labeled with a letter), read their card, and say “weather” or “climate.”
As students are going around the room, keep track of different components of climate that are brought up on the board. This might help with your transition to the data station rotations.
Example: if a situation card talks about how much rain an area is getting, you can write “precipitation” on the board because it’s a component of climate. Other components: snow, temperature, extreme storm events, etc.
Weather vs. Climate Cards
A
Fall in Northwest Indiana tends to be dry and cool.
B
The temperature is currently 66◦ F.
C*
Tomorrow will be great for a picnic! It’s supposed to be partly cloudy and 75◦F all day.
D
Valparaiso, Indiana averages 39 inches of snow each year.
E*
Antarctica has been freezing cold, even during the summer, for tens of thousands of years.
F
A cyclone hit India’s coast today.
G
Tonight the nighttime low is expected to be -5◦C.
H
The fog made it difficult to drive to school this morning.
I
The evenings are generally mild.
J
I need a warm jacket for the winter.
K
I need to wear a sweater and long pants today.
L
The leaves turn colors in October because the days and nights are cooler.
N
Last summer there was a heat wave in New York City that lasted four days.
O
Normally we don’t have any snow days.
P
Last week there was an overnight freeze that damaged the orange crops in central Florida.
Q
During the last Ice Age, Earth had large glaciers and ice sheets.
R*
A snow advisory was issued for southern Quebec.
S
In 2012, England had a record wet summer while the U.S. had drought conditions.
M
The barn swallows have been coming back earlier in the spring the last few years.
T
Costa Rica has a rainy season from May to November.
U Madagascar has a hot, rainy season and a cool, dry season.
V My Grandma reminded me to pack my umbrella this morning.
W There was a flood in Warsaw, Poland last week.
X If you live in Minnesota, you will need a good pair of snow boots.
Y
A tsunami hit Japan a few years ago.
Z
The average yearly temperature in the Sahara Desert is 84◦F.
Purpose: The goal of this activity is to immerse students in the overwhelming amount of data in support of climate change. Each of these stations contain data and graphics from a wide variety of sources. Students will have practice interpreting and building graphs and comparing and contrasting the way information is portrayed in graphs. The thought is that if students start to see that climate change will touch everyone (and already is touching everyone) in some way, then they will be more concerned about treating the cause of the problem.
Set-Up: Each group of students will need to cycle through 4 stations. Each station takes roughly 7-10 minutes to complete. The backpack contains materials to set up 2 of each station. Prior to class, information for three of the four stations needs to be printed out so that it is up-to-date and specific to the community in which you teach. The 4 stations are listed below. Directions for collecting the correct information from these sites it provided. These stations should be set up prior to students entering your classroom.
Global Climate Data Station:
Climate.gov- no additional teacher prep, these graphs are provided in the folder.
This website has AWESOME info, ranging from the global scale down to city scale. Select Indiana and County.
Check to make sure you are in the “time series” tab.
Parameter can be average temperature or precipitation.
Time scale should be all months, month can be selected at random, your start year and end year should be as early and recent as possible, respectively.
Select appropriate state and county. In the blue box on the right-hand side of the screen, select “display trend” and “per century.” On the graph, the key will state how much precipitation or temperature has increased over the past century.
This graph can be printed, or left displayed on a computer, laptop or IPad.
This site takes you to a database that provides local climate information from NASA. You will need to look up your school’s latitude and longitude coordinates using a google search.
To access carbon dioxide data, click the “Data Set” Button in the top left-hand corner of the page.
Click Atmosphere→ Air Quality→ Monthly Carbon Dioxide
In the “Line Plots” Section on the lower left-hand side of the screen, click “time”
Input your latitude and longitude coordinates in their appropriate slot
Click the “Update Plot” Button on the top left-hand side of the screen,
A graph should come up. For this station, students are asked to graph the raw data. To access the raw data, look at the top of the screen, click the “show values” button in the middle, and click “ok” in the box that pops up.
You should now see a long list of numbers. Highlight this table (starting with the first date. As shown in the example above, highlight
“15-SEP-2002” to “3699.7162” and all the way down through the table.
Copy these numbers into a Word doc, then make them bigger.
At this station, students will be selecting 6 random data points from out of a bag. This means that these data points need to be cut out as slips. To make this go quicker, two data points can be grouped together, as seen below.
These slips should be transferred to a bag/bin of some kind and set up at a station. See the supplementary materials for a graph that should also be placed at this station.
Students will plot their individual points on their own graph (this will be in their packet) and will plot their points on the CLASS GRAPH.
Designate a section of the board or a piece of butcher paper for a class graph. This can be copied from the graph included in the student data dive packet.
Make sure to label the axes of the graph with up-to-date dates.
Assign groups of 3-4, and each group at one of the four stations in one of the two rotation cycles.
Students will rotate from station to station, each of which has different climate data, that will help them answer questions in their packet. Only 7-10 minutes can be allocated at each station.
Each student should have a copy of the packet that is provided in the folder.
Explain how students are going to rotate prior to having them start at their first station.
Time permitting, briefly review the following site as a class: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets The data on this website is really pretty complicated. However, just displaying this website to students might be helpful. This link directs you to a page where there are categories of different paleoclimatic data in one spot. Paleoclimatic data is evidence from living things that were on earth long before us humans were.
The advantage to this is that you can show students that scientists have more than one way of reviewing and comparing climate data. There are tons of clues in the natural world that clue us into what happened before we started keeping measurements. The stations they just completed were based off recent human measurements. The data at this is from items that have been “leftover” and just so happen to tell us something about the way climate used to be.
Student Worksheet:
Name:_____________________________________
Climate Change Data Dive
Instructions: As you go from station to station with your group, please complete the questions that align with the data you are looking at. Happy diving!!
Global Climate Data Station: Use the graph titled “History of Global Surface Temperature Since 1880” to answer the following questions.
An anomaly is an outcome that is different from what is normal or expected. How have the global temperature anomalies changed from 1900 to 2010?
What has been the general trend in global average temperature since the 1980’s?
Use the graph titled “CO2 during ice ages and warm periods for the past 800,000 years” to help you answer the following questions. 3. Discuss one pattern or trend you see on this graph.
4. How do today’s CO2 levels compare to CO2 levels 500,000 years ago?
5. Name one city in the United States and one city anywhere else in the world that will be underwater if all of the ice caps melted.
6. Will climate change affect all humans equally?
7. Will the climate change the same way everywhere on the planet? WHY?
United States/Midwest Region Data Station: Use the graphs from globalchange.gov (look at the source at the bottom of the page) to help answer the following questions. 8. How have precipitation trends changes in the Midwest compared to Hawaii?
9. Notice that there are two different graphs that provide information on precipitation changes. How do they communicate the same trends differently?
Using a graph of your choice… 10. Explain how winter in the midwest is projected (predicted) to change between 2041 and 2070.
Indiana-Specific Data Station 11. Has climate changed in your county? Provide evidence from a graph and note which graph you collected your information from.
12. The Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment states: “In interpreting the data in this report, it is important to keep in mind that a range of future climates is possible for our state, depending not only on the future rate of greenhouse gas emissions, but also on how the climate system responds to those emissions.”
Why do you think there are a few different ways climate can change? In other words, why isn’t there just one clear way the climate will change?
13. Look at the diagrams titled “Frost Days” and “Extreme Heat Days.” What is the benefit of comparing data from three different parts of Indiana?
Local Carbon Dioxide Data Station
At this station you will find a bag/bin with slips of paper. Each member of the group should pick 5 slips of paper.
As a group, make one graph. Below are some hints to help you get started.
Title: Carbon Dioxide Concentrations in (Name of city where data was taken)
X-axis: time (years)
Y-axis: parts per million (ppm)
graph each group member’s data points on one graph
Each member of the group should graph their data point on the class graph. This is on a big piece of butcher paper.
14. How are the trends in your group’s graph similar and/or different from the class graph?
15. When are scientists most confident in their conclusions?
