CLEAN: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network
CLEAN: The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network supports educators in building climate literacy as outlined in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program framework, “Essential Principles of Climate Literacy” by providing a collection of educational resources that facilitate learning about climate issues. The CLEAN collection is a free online database of ~1,000 free, peer-reviewed, and ready-to-use educational resources for teaching elementary, middle, high school, and undergraduate students about climate and energy. The collection contains activities, demonstrations, experiments, visualizations, and videos—everything you need to create data-rich and authentic lessons on climate and energy. Climate and energy topics include the climate system, causes of climate change, measuring and modeling climate, impacts of climate change, human responses and solutions to climate change, energy use, mental health, environmental justice, and many more. Resources are rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and pedagogic relevancy, making the CLEAN collection of high enough quality to steward the NOAA Teaching Climate database.
In this activity, students engage in a simulation of the international negotiation …
In this activity, students engage in a simulation of the international negotiation process in order to convey how the international community is responding to climate change. Participants learn firsthand about the interests of different countries and the range of policy responses to mitigate future climate change.
This is an interactive map of California and the Sierra Nevada mountains, …
This is an interactive map of California and the Sierra Nevada mountains, showing how the amount of water stored in the snowpack will vary under different climate scenarios. The tool shows observations and projections from 1950 to 2090, and uses low or high emission scenarios to model future snowpack. The tool can be adjusted to show different months of the year and various climate models, graphed by site.
In this activity, students assume the role of a team of architects …
In this activity, students assume the role of a team of architects that has been commissioned to build a solar house containing both active and passive solar components. First, they must design the house and then build a model. The model is tested to determine how well it utilizes solar energy.
In this 'Energy Education for the 21st Century' design challenge, students construct …
In this 'Energy Education for the 21st Century' design challenge, students construct and evaluate a solar-powered model car. Students utilize the design process and undergo review by their peers to select an optimal gear ratio and components for their car. As a culminating activity, students compete in a Solar Sprint race modeled after the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Junior Solar Sprint competition.
Student teams design and build solar water heating devices that mimic those …
Student teams design and build solar water heating devices that mimic those used in residences to capture energy in the form of solar radiation and convert it to thermal energy. In this activity, students gain a better understanding of the three different types of heat transfer, each of which plays a role in the solar water heater design. Once the model devices are constructed, students perform efficiency calculations and compare designs.
This is a team-based activity that teaches students about the scale of …
This is a team-based activity that teaches students about the scale of the greenhouse gas problem and the technologies that already exist which can dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Students select carbon-cutting strategies to construct a carbon mitigation profile, filling the the wedges of a climate stabilization triangle.
In this hands-on activity, participants learn the characteristics of the five layers …
In this hands-on activity, participants learn the characteristics of the five layers of the atmosphere and make illustrations to represent them. They roll the drawings and place them in clear plastic cylinders, and then stack the cylinders to make a model column of the atmosphere.
In this activity, students calculate electricity use by state and determine, using …
In this activity, students calculate electricity use by state and determine, using Google Earth, how much land would be required to replace all sources of electricity with solar panels.
In this activity, learners use Google Earth to calculate electricity use by …
In this activity, learners use Google Earth to calculate electricity use by state and determine how much land would be required to replace all sources of electricity with solar panels. They also consider costs and land-use trade-offs.
This short video clip summarizes NOAA's annual State of the Climate Report …
This short video clip summarizes NOAA's annual State of the Climate Report for 2009. It presents a comprehensive summary of Earth's climate in 2009 and establishes the last decade as the warmest on record. Reduced extent of Arctic sea ice, glacier volume, and snow cover reflect the effects of rising global temperature.
In this short activity, students create a timeline of climate science over …
In this short activity, students create a timeline of climate science over the past 200 years and gather information from a U.S. Forest Service video about mitigation and adaptation strategies undertaken by the Service to address climate change in national forests.
This short cartoon video uses a simple baseball analogy (steroid use increases …
This short cartoon video uses a simple baseball analogy (steroid use increases probability of hitting home runs) to explain how small increases in greenhouse gases can cause global temperature changes and increase the probability of extreme weather events.
This learning activity provides a systematic and objective framework to enable students …
This learning activity provides a systematic and objective framework to enable students to develop skills to recognize whether a source of information is scientifically valid or not. Even though this resource does not explicitly address CLEPs or ELEPs, it does fill the need for educational resources that teach students how to accurately assess if a source is scientifically valid or not. It also addresses NGSS Science and Engineering Practice standards ("engaging in an argument from evidence" and "obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information").
In this activity, students research various topics about ocean health, e.g. overfishing, …
In this activity, students research various topics about ocean health, e.g. overfishing, habitat destruction, invasive species, climate change, pollution, and ocean acidification. An optional extension activity has them creating an aquatic biosphere in a bottle experiment in which they can manipulate variables.
This NASA video reviews the role of the sun in driving the …
This NASA video reviews the role of the sun in driving the climate system. It uses colorful animations to illustrate Earth's energy balance and how increased greenhouse gases are creating an imbalance in the energy budget, leading to warming. The video also reviews how the NASA satellite program collects data on the sun.
This video provides an overview of how computer models work. It explains …
This video provides an overview of how computer models work. It explains the process of data assimilation, which is necessary to ensure that models are tied to reality. The video includes a discussion of weather models using the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-5) model and climate models using the MERRA (Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications) technique.
This short animation compares graphs of the natural variation in the sun's …
This short animation compares graphs of the natural variation in the sun's energy striking the upper atmosphere vs global surface temperature over a 30-year period to make the point that natural variations do not account for the rising trend line in surface temperatures.
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