This article discusses ten common misconceptions held by students and adults about climate change.
This resource is a website that is a self-contained, multi-part introduction to how climate models work. The materials include videos and animations about understanding, constructing and applying climate models.
This video explains how scientists construct computer-generated climate models to forecast weather, understand climate, and project climate change. It discusses how different types of climate models can be used and how scientists use computers to build these models.
Earth's climate system is enormously complex, and scientists develop climate models to understand how climate change will play out in different parts of the world. Students play a climate resilience game, and then explore the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report to learn more about how climate scientists handle uncertainty in models. This guide is an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about uncertainty."
The Climate Momentum Simulation allows users to quickly compare the resulting sea level rise, temperature change, atmospheric CO2, and global CO2 emissions from six different policy options projected out to 2100.
From weeks-long dry spells to extreme precipitation events, farmers face significant challenges in bringing crops to market. Heres how one grower uses seasonal climate forecasts to increase his chances for success.
This course introduces students to climate studies, including beginnings of the solar system, time scales, and climate in human history. It is offered to both undergraduate and graduate students with different requirements.
A free three-week extension course on how to get to net-zero emissions. Designed for high school social studies classrooms. Focused on climate education, policy, and student action.
This interactive visualization is a suite of weather and climate datasets as well as tools with which to manipulate and display them visually.
This is a rich compilation of resources and tools to help decision-makers across the US identify their local climate threats and vulnerabilities and reduce their risks from impacts of climate variability and change. As part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan, the toolkit was developed by NOAA in partnership with NASA and other departments and agencies in the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
This video is part of the Climate Science in a Nutshell video series. This short video looks at the effects of climate change happening right now around the globe, including: more extreme weather events, droughts, forest fires, land use changes, altered ranges of disease-carrying insects, and the loss of some agricultural products. It concludes with a discussion of the differences between weather, climate variability, and climate change.
This short video discusses where carbon dioxide, the gas that is mainly responsible for warming up our planet and changing the climate, comes from. It discusses how the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide comes directly from the burning of fossil fuels and indirectly from the human need for energy.
This short video makes the case that rapid climate change affects the whole planet, but individuals can make a difference and make their carbon footprint smaller. Common suggestions are identified for young children to consciously consider what they can do.
ClimateSim is a fast and simple climate modeling and simulation tool. It is a web app that is freely available to anyone interested in climate science. ClimateSim allows users to model scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions in the current century and simulates the first-order response of the earth system. ClimateSim makes climate simulation accessible in a simplified form and provides an easy-to-use simulation platform for performing virtual climate experiments. ClimateSim is primarily targeted as a science education tool for undergraduate and advanced high-school students in physics, environmental science and related courses. Instructors can use ClimateSim to illustrate climate-change concepts, demonstrate dynamic relationships between climate variables, and assign simulation-based exercises as part of their courses. It is also an appropriate and accessible tool that policymakers, journalists and others can use to get a better understanding and working knowledge of the basics of climate science.
This is a simulation that illustrates how temperature will be affected by global CO2 emission trajectories. It addresses the issue that even if global emissions begin to decrease, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will continue to increase, resulting in increased global temperatures.
The Climate Toolkit is a resource manual designed to help the reader navigate the complex and perplexing issue of climate change by providing tools and strategies to explore the underlying science. As such it contains a collection of activities that make use of readily available on-line resources developed by research groups and public agencies. These include web-based climate models, climate data archives, interactive atlases, policy papers, and “solution” catalogs. Unlike a standard textbook, it is designed to help readers do their own climate research and devise their own perspective rather than providing them with a script to assimilate and repeat.
Meet the Climate Trackers—a group of scientists who are using measurements to tell the story of climate change and inform the decisions that will shape our future. In the resources below, you’ll learn about these scientists and their lab, and discover why their research matters in real life. Grab your notebook to take notes as you explore!
Resources available for learning about this lab include:
• Interactive cards designed to introduce students to scientists in a more personal way
• A video with a personal story that explains why the lab's research matters in real life
• Questions to consider that will spark connection, reflection, and conversation
• An interactive video experience where you can ask questions of scientists in the lab and learn about their research
• An educator guide with information about standards alignment, curriculum connections, and tips for using the media resources
These resources are part of Meet the Lab, a collection of educational resources for middle school classrooms.
In this activity, students work with climate data from the tropical Pacific Ocean to understand how sea-surface temperature and atmospheric pressure affect precipitation in the tropical Pacific in a case study format.
In this activity, students examine climate variability in the North Atlantic associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NOA) in a case study format.
This is an interactive webtool that allows the user to choose a state or country and both assess how climate has changed over time and project what future changes are predicted to occur in a given area.