SC.912.E.7.9

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson covers:

• How wind influences ocean currents
• How currents transport heat and water around the world
• Florida specific currents and oceanography
• How currents connect the world’s climate

Type: Lesson Plan

The changing climate is an important topic for both scientific analysis and worldly knowledge. This lesson uses data collected by the National Snow and Ice Data Center to create and use mathematical models as a predictive tool and do critical analysis of sea ice loss.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn about how the oceans absorb CO₂ and because the oceans are absorbing CO₂ at such an alarming rate, the oceans are acidifying. Students will learn about the effects of acidification on the oceans. Students will research on their own, using reliable websites given by teacher, the past, present, and possible future effects of acidification on coral reefs, and gather information about where this has taken place already and the effects. Students will create a poster of the past, present, and possible future amounts of CO₂ absorbed in the ocean and discuss the effects on the health of coral reefs.

Type: Lesson Plan

The changing climate is an important topic for both scientific analysis and worldly knowledge. This lesson uses data collected by the National Snow and Ice Data Center to create and use statistical analysis as a tool to evaluate the sea ice loss. Students will use technology to quickly generate graphs for each month looking for trends, patterns or deviations over time.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text on the carbon dioxide/oxygen exchange in the Southern Ocean. The extent to which massive Southern Ocean currents, other biotic and abiotic factors, and ocean color impacts global warming is currently not known. Scientists will use a modified plane set up as a laboratory to gather this data. The lesson is designed to support reading in the content area and includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses the issue of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from carbon sink sites located in coastal habitats. This informational text is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how carbon that has been stored for potentially thousands of years is getting released into the atmosphere due to coastal habitat destruction of mangrove forests, salt marshes, and sea grass beds. The lesson plan includes text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will research climate and current conditions and try to establish correlations. They then will draw conclusions and make predictions as to the role of ocean currents in climate.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will use multiple hands-on activities, videos, and text resources to evaluate the ocean's influence on global climate change. Student engagement and investigation are the focus of this lesson with the intent of increasing rigor and creating global citizens. The summative assessment focuses on student application of their new knowledge to answer a scientific question; students present their findings in various mediums.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will reinforce previously taught concepts, such as water taking longer to heat up (and longer to cool down) than land, but extend their understanding using the NOAA link "Ten Signs of a Warming World." They will focus on the tab "Ocean Heat Content," and explore the ways in which scientists are measuring ocean temperatures. They will examine the data concerning ocean heat content and obsere the large effects that oceans are having in a warming world.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity, students will practice the steps involved in a scientific investigation as they learn why ice formations on land (and not those on water) will cause a rise in sea level upon melting. This is a discovery lesson in ice and water density and displacement of water by ice floating on the surface as it relates to global climate change.

Type: Lesson Plan

Angela Dial discusses the geologic and scientific evidence related to climate change in the past.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Angela Dial talks about using ocean core proxy data to investigate Earth's climate from the past.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

In this video, Don Chambers explains how satellite technology is essential for assessment of sea level changes. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Watch as Don Chambers explains the role of satellites in measuring the mass of ice sheets and the connections between ice sheet mass changes and sea level. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Watch as Brad Rosenheim, a geological oceanographer, explains how modern technology and sampling methods are used for sea level research. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

In this video, Brad Rosenheim describes how Louisiana sediment cores are used to estimate sea level changes over the last 10,000 years. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Eugene Domack, a geological oceanographer, describes how sediment cores are collected and used to estimate rates of ice sheet movement in Antarctica. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

In this video, Eugene Domack explains how past Antarctic ice sheet movement rates allow us to understand sea level changes. Video funded by NSF grant #: OCE-1502753.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Learn how the ocean pressures the climate into changing.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

In the Earth's systems, everything is connected! This meteorologist explains the relationship between monsoonal heat columns and polar ice-melt.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Angela Dial discusses how she solves systems of equations to determine how the composition of ocean floor sediment has changed over 65 million years to help reveal more information regarding climate change.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

What happens when math models go wrong in forecasting hurricanes?

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Let this researcher explain how studying fossils and isotopes can help us understand ancient climate conditions!

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes different ecosystems that store carbon, like forests, and goes into how carbon is stored more efficiently in coastal ecosystems. The text goes on to advocate for conserving and protecting our coastal ecosystems to keep the carbon stored and prevent the carbon from being released into the atmosphere to further impact the planet through climate change. The text also explores other benefits for conserving coastal ecosystems.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are set to launch a series of flights over the Southern Ocean in order to collect data on how the air and seas surrounding Antarctica exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is hoped that this data will help us with future predictions about climate change, and maybe even lead to new insights on how the ocean works.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Did you know that climate has two not-so-nice children? Meet El Niño and La Niña, the "boy" and "girl" spawned by the global climate every 3-7 years. They can give the world a climate that's quite troublesome, depending on which one is causing the disturbance.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text explains that changing weather patterns can be linked to a weakening of the jet stream. It is known that the jet stream is responsible for changeable weather patterns, and the weakening of the stream is causing weather conditions to stay in locations for longer periods of time. The article concludes that the fuel source of the jet stream (the differences in temperature between the tropics and the arctic) is becoming less dramatic, which in turn is weakening the winds.

Type: Text Resource

With an often unexpected outcome from a simple experiment, students can discover the factors that cause and influence thermohaline circulation in our oceans. In two 45-minute class periods, students complete activities where they observe the melting of ice cubes in saltwater and freshwater, using basic materials: clear plastic cups, ice cubes, water, salt, food coloring, and thermometers. There are no prerequisites for this lesson but it is helpful if students are familiar with the concepts of density and buoyancy as well as the salinity of seawater. It is also helpful if students understand that dissolving salt in water will lower the freezing point of water. There are additional follow up investigations that help students appreciate and understand the importance of the ocean's influence on Earth's climate.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation