This activity is related to a Teachable Moment from April 12, 2017. See "Celebrate Earth Day with NASA Science Data" › Explore more on the Teachable Moments Blog In this activity, students will use global temperature data to create models and compare short-term trends to long-term trends. They will then determine whether global temperature is rising based on the data. Note: This activity is aligned to education standards for fifth grade and high school grade bands. As such, we have provided two sets of procedures, one for grade five and one for high school. Other variations for each grade band are indicated throughout the activity. Global annual mean temperature data – text file | CSV file Global monthly mean temperature data – text file | CSV file (Grade 5) Quadrille-ruled graph paper, four squares per inch OR Graphing Worksheet – Download PDF (Grade 5) Tape (Optional, for grade 5) Scissors (High School) Spreadsheet software, e.g., Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets Grade 5
Grade 8 and High School
Scientists have concluded that our climate is changing, that global temperatures are on the rise, and that there are serious consequences to these rising temperatures. But in an age of plentiful yet opposing information, how do students separate fact from fiction? Simple: Examine the source data and do the math. Weather and climate are two frequently confused terms that refer to events with broadly different spatial and time scales. Weather refers to atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time – from minutes to hours or days. Familiar examples include rain, snow, clouds, winds, floods or thunderstorms. Remember, weather is local and short-term. Climate, on the other hand, refers to the long-term regional or even global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years or decades. Climate is regional or global and long-term; weather is local and short-term. Erratic weather in your neighborhood – whether rain or drought – may or may not be a symptom of global climate change. To know, we must monitor weather patterns over many years. Two other terms that are often incorrectly used interchangeably are “global warming” and “climate change.” Global warming refers to the upward temperature trend across the entire Earth since the early 20th century – and most notably since the late 1970s – due to the increase in fossil-fuel emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Though there are many different greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, or CO2, is the one that has been on the rise during the last century. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 39 percent. Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases causes the Earth greenhouse to overheat. Worldwide since 1880, the average Earth surface temperature has gone up by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) relative to the mid-20th-century baseline (measured between 1951 and 1980). This short video explains why Earth's temperature is rising, how we know, and what NASA is doing to study the causes and effects. Climate change refers to a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena include the increased temperature trends described by global warming, but also encompass changes such as sea-level rise; ice-mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower and plant blooming; and extreme weather events. Climate change is driven by an increase in global temperature. But how do we know global temperatures are on the rise? We analyze temperature data, including daily temperature readings and monthly or annual average temperatures. The longest running record of directly measured temperature is the Central England temperature data series starting in 1659. The longest-running global record starts in 1880. Data are obtained from land stations and ships around the globe. More recently, satellites are used to measure temperature in the troposphere – the lowest level in our atmosphere. It is possible to derive temperatures prior to the dates of these modern records by studying polar region ice cores and ocean sediment cores. Ice cores store records of millennia of climate data. Using ice cores, scientists have reconstructed climate data for the last 750,000 years, showing seven ice ages, each interspersed with a warm interglacial climate like our climate today. (The difference between those interglacial periods and today is the increased rate at which the climate is changing – a rate that is directly related to the presence of humans and increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.) Ocean sediment cores add more data to the puzzle by way of marine fossils and sedimentary layers. Isotopic oxygen in marine fossils gives us information about ocean temperatures when the fossils were formed, and sedimentary layers provide data about historical events such as volcanic eruptions. This activity allows students to examine real science data and draw their own conclusions about trends in global mean temperature. Note: Global temperature data are reported as anomalies, the measure of the amount of departure from a reference value or long-term average. A positive anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was warmer than the reference value. A negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was cooler than the reference value. Anomalies more accurately describe climate variability over larger areas (that may have very different absolute temperatures) than absolute temperatures do. They also give a frame of reference that allows for more meaningful comparisons between locations and more accurate calculations of temperature trends. For better conceptual understanding, students may calculate absolute temperature from anomalies by adding the reference value to each anomaly. For elementary school students, the global annual mean temperature data set is reported as absolute temperature for simplicity. Grade 5
The completed graph should look something like this. + enlarge image Grade 8 and High School
Here's an example of how manipulating a graph could cause casual observers to make an inaccurate assumption about the data. Here we've chosen a scale far outside the reasonable possibility for the data set, so it has flattened the graph and made any details and trends too small to see. + enlarge image
Grade 5
High School
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