Residents of North Slope Borough, Alaska, look to solar-powered ice cellars and other strategies to preserve their traditional whaling lifestyle.
With valuable cultural and dietary assets at risk from sea level rise, this Pacific Northwest Tribe developed a plan to identify community adaptation priorities and concerns, and charted a course of action to address them.
This course is a laboratory accompaniment to 12.803, Quasi-balanced Circulations in Oceans and Atmospheres. The subject includes analysis of observations of oceanic and atmospheric quasi-balanced flows, computational models, and rotating tank experiments. Student projects illustrate the basic principles of potential vorticity conservation and inversion, Rossby wave propagation, baroclinic instability, and the behavior of isolated vortices.
Students observe and discuss a vacuum cleaner model of a baghouse to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.
Students observe demonstrations, and build and evaluate simple models to understand the greenhouse effect, the role of increased greenhouse gas concentration in global warming, and the implications of global warming theory for engineers, themselves and the Earth. In an associated literacy activity, students learn how a bill becomes law and research global warming legislation.
This activity involves student teams classifying clouds into the main categories, making a poster of their findings, having a poster session and learning the vocabulary terms cirrus, stratus and cumulus.
This book making activity is a way to assess students knowledge of cloud types, their description, and the weather they bring.
As ice retreats and energy resources along Alaska's North Slope become more accessible, diverse stakeholders consider potential futures and develop a science-informed view of the implications of development in the region.
Observational data set since 1855 from both Madison area lakes Mendota and Monona from the Wisconsin State Climatology Office and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Over the past 40 years, some lobstermen in South Thomaston, Maine, say that they could "set their watches by the start of the lobster shedding event each season. In 2012, though, extreme warm ocean temperaturesan ocean heat wavecombined with early and repeated lobster shedding. The obvious changes in lobsters during this event galvanized many lobstermen to take the impacts of climate change seriously.
Can you adjust the atmosphere to make a thunderstorm?
Thunderstorms can only happen under certain conditions.
What do temperature and humidity need to be like up high and near tothe ground to make a storm?
This activity is a field investigation where students measure, record and describe weather conditions using common tools (rain gauge, thermometer, and barometer). They will compare their observations to Weather.com (online) and the local newspapers to compare their findings, and record these observations.
A survey of the mechanical behavior of rocks in natural geologic situations. Topics: brief survey of field evidence of rock deformation, physics of plastic deformation in minerals, brittle fracture and sliding, and pressure-solution processes. Results of field petrologic and structural studies compared to data from experimental structural geology.
Laboratory or field work in earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences. To be arranged with department faculty. Consult with department Education Office. This course introduces students to the basic concepts of Medical Geology/Geochemistry. Medical Geology/Geochemistry is the study of the interaction between abundances of elements and isotopes and the health of humans and plants.
Students observe and discuss a cup and pencil model of a cyclone to better understand the science behind how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.
These animations depict the three major Milankovitch Cycles that impact global climate, visually demonstrating the definitions of eccentricity, obliquity, and precession, and their ranges of variation and timing on the Earth.
Students learn about the remote sensing radio occultation technique and how engineers use it with GPS satellites to monitor and study the Earth's atmospheric activity. Students may be familiar with some everyday uses of GPS, but not as familiar with how GPS technology contributes to our ongoing need for great amounts of ever-changing global atmospheric data for accurate weather forecasting, storm tracking and climate change monitoring. GPS occultations are when GPS signals sent from one satellite to another are altered (delayed, refracted) by the atmosphere passed though, such that they can be analyzed to remotely learn about the planet's atmospheric conditions.
Our modern world uses many different materials, often complexly constructed and difficult to recycle. Students investigate the elements in a smartphone and innovations in cement and steel. They also consider the challenge of communicating about large and complex numbers. This guide an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about materials."
Students learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the greenhouse effect. They construct their own miniature greenhouses and explore how their designs take advantage of heat transfer processes to create controlled environments. They record and graph measurements, comparing the greenhouse indoor and outdoor temperatures over time. Students are also introduced to global issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and their relationship to global warming.
In this activity, students pose several hypotheses for what will happen if you continue heating or supplying energy to the hot and cold planet models (Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Earth) and then test their hypotheses using a spreadsheet based radiation balance model. The activity supports investigation of a real world challenge, experimenting with life support conditions for Mars at an Arctic outpost. The interactive model runs are conducted using a Java applet. This resource includes student worksheets, assessment questions and a teacher's guide. This is Activity B in module 2, Modeling hot and cold planets, of the resource, Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.