Activity Title: What Factors Create Climate?

Contributing Teacher: Elizabeth Youngman, Phoenix Country Day School
betsy.youngman@pcds.org

Unit Goals I Background I Essential Questions I Activity Summary I Outcomes I Standards I Pre -Requisite Knowledge I Lesson Plan I Assessment I Teacher Resources I Biomes Links I Arctic Home Page

Suggested Grade Levels: 4 -12

Lesson Duration: The entire project takes five - seven 40 minute class periods:
Preparation time:20 -40 minutes to collect materials/ prepare
Hands-on lab time: 40 minutes
Part A: 40 minutes
Part B: 80 minutes
part C: 80 minutes

Materials and Technology Needed: Internet resources for looking at climate patterns in different regions, paper copies of the world maps, available at www.globe.gov resource room, world maps and globes are good visual aids.

If doing the lab, the lab materials; globes, temperature probes or thermometers, masking tape and lamps. A set of biomes posters or magazine pictures can be used along with this activity.

Alternatively this activity can be done with GIS package.

Safety Considerations: When using the internet students must be made aware of the school's acceptable use policy and be supervised by an adult. If the lab activity is added the lamps can get very hot and students should be warned not to touch the hot metal or knock the lamps over. Depending on the age of the students doing the activity the lab may require more supervision.

Teacher Preparation: To prepare for this activity it is important to review the links and have a back up plan if the computers /Internet is not working. Photocopy a list of instructions for each student to use while working on the project. Download and print out graphs of cities that work with the questions for demonstration purposes and as a backup.

This activity meshes nicely with a lab, so that will need to be set up as well. Most labs involve a a globe and temperature probe and the appropriate computer software to collect temperature data. Lab Sources: PASCO Earth and Environmental Science labs, Vernier Earth Science with Computers.

Goals and Learning Outcomes:

• Students will use data collected first hand in a lab modeling the heating of the globe with an incandescent light to hypothesize that different regions of the world may have different temperature ranges, one element of climate.
• Students will use the internet to find data on temperature and precipitation at different times or seasons of the year in the northern and southern hemispheres.
• Students will select appropriate cites and parameters to make a graph of temperature, and precipitation data.
• Students will copy their graphs into a word processing document and describe their findings.
• Students will use GIS to look for relationships between data sets.
• Students will then expand their inquiry to other elements of climate; solar energy, temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation.
• Students will transfer their understanding of climate to the concept of biomes.

Background: Students will begin the activity set with a lab that will model how the earth heats at different rates in the summer and winter seasons. From this lab experience, the students can begin to hypothesize that different regions of the earth have different temperature ranges, one element of climate. Building upon their experience with this small scale model, students will begin to formulate the relationship between sun angle and temperature range. Students will then have the opportunity to use the internet and GIS program to search for climate data around the world to validate their hypotheses.

Activity Summary:

Lesson Plan:

Lab - Begin with one of the insolation labs listed below.
PASCO: Insolation and the seasons, Sunlight intensity and reflectivity of the earth's surface.
Vernier: The reason for the seasons, Insolation
40 - 50 minutes - lab handout

Part A - Once students have a sense of temperature variations at different locations at different times of the year they can begin to pick out and zoom in to cities they would like to know more specifics about. In this part of the activity they should become familiar with climate in a variety of locations. Suggest that they choose at least three locations in each hemisphere and record the temperature and precipitation data from those places vs Latitude and Longitude.
40 -80 minutes. Website: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/onlineprod/drought/xmgr.html

Part B -Use the GLOBE program website or GIS activity, and activities students in order to understand the earth from larger perspective and to begin to draw conclusions about the relationships between multiple climate factors.
time; 40 minutes Website: http://www.globe.gov/fsl/educornimages/poster_letter_color.jpg and http://www.globe.gov/fsl/html/templ.cgi?esframe_solar&lang=en&nav=1

Part C- As a final project, students will select an "ultimate" location and research its climate. This information will be presented in a brochure to share with the class. Factors included in the brochure can include: Temperature, precipitation, vegetation, biomes and climate class.
time: 80-120 minutes depending on how much work is done at home

Outcomes:

Results / Analysis: The students should see patterns in the data fairly easily after working with the single sites and progreesing up to the full visualizations.

Teacher reflections: This activity set can be separated into smaller discrete pieces and used in a variety of ways. I like to start with a hands-on activity such as a lab before moving to a more abstract source of data, such as the internet. It helps students to be critical of their findings on the internet. "Does this data make sense?", is a big question in my classes. Too often kids trust everything they see on the computer and if they have asked the computer the wrong questions they will get nonsense answers.

I looked at many websites for climate data before choosing the NOAA site. I liked it best because I thought the kids could pick the right choices to get a graph. If kids are less familiar with the computer and Internet this section may need to be more guided.

I originally conceived the ideas for this lesson when the art teacher was covering my classes for a week and I had to think of something she would enjoy, hence the idea of the brochure, but the kids seem to like making something to show their understanding of climate better than just having a test. I like the GLOBE website data site as a tool for comparing and contrasting climate parameters. It is student friendly and allows even young students to see patterns in data. I used their questions as a starting point for this section of the activity set.

Extensions: Following this exercise in discovering "normal climate" I like to diverge and discuss historical climate, and the processes by which scientists reconstruct climate from records such as in the ice and seafloor cores. There are good web sites with this information. It is also a good point to continue on to lessons on global warming and our changing climate. I have written a web based lesson for this. Another alternative I found this summer uses GIS data and looks at climate in cities around the USA it is available on the ESRI website. I also created this web site about climate in the Arctic - http://www.pcds.org/arctic/arctic_lessons/arctic_atlas.htm

Assessment Suggestions:
1. Use the biome brochure as one assessment showing synthesis of materials, that there are many factors that work together to give a place its unique qualities. Each student presents his or her place and explains the climate parameters of that location.

2. The website http://nasa.earthobservatory.gov has a built in quiz.

3. A traditional test of factual material.

Standards Addressed:

Arizona State Standards grades 5-8:

Science as inquiry

1SC-P2 Compare observations of the real world to observations of a constructed model. This is accomplished through the lab activity as the model and then on to looking at real data from the web. This will help students to see the usefulness of models.

Earth and Space Science

6SC-E8 Describe and model large scale and local weather systems
Describe the differences between weather and climate. This is accomplished by looking at larger and larger sets of data before concluding information about climate.

6SC-P2 Describe an understanding of the earth's tilt, rotation and revolution and their effects on the seasons and the length of the days. The lab helps students to see this. The length of days and its effect on heating is also important.

References / Resources:
Websites:

NOAA climate data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/onlineprod/drought/xmgr.html

GLOBE resources:

http://www.globe.gov/fsl/educornimages/poster_letter_color.jpg

http://www.globe.gov/fsl/html/templ.cgi?esframe_solar&lang=en&nav=1

BIOMES websites: http://www.pcds.org/share/sci8/usefullinks/biome.htm

Paleoclimatology: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleo.html

ESRI website: with a climate activity http://gis.esri.com/industries/education/arclessons/search_results.cfm

Climate Change Web Site: http://www.pcds.org/arctic/arctic_lessons/climate_change_questions.htm

My World GIS

Please send questions to betsy.youngman@pcds.org