Key Earth Science Links
Global Climate Change Web Sites
Global Change Master Directory. NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center. Large website with data sets, web information, and technical reports on a wide variety of topics related to global climate change including agriculture, atmosphere, oceans, paleoclimate, climate indicators, sun-earth interactions, and more. There are also links to 200 sites for background information, links to more than 70 lesson plans, and links to more than 150 classroom activities.
Climate Change Kids Site. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA’s website contains information, online animations, and games related to climate and global warming including Climate Change, Greenhouse Effect, Climate Systems, Climate’s Come a Long Way (history of climate change), Climate Detectives, Can We Change the Climate?, and We can make a Difference. Online word searches, puzzles, and quizzes are also offered.
Global Change. U.S. Geological Survey. Grades 4-6. Activities are presented to assist in teaching concepts of Global Change. Includes sections: Introduction and Activities, Teacher’s Guide, Time and Cycles, Change and Cycles, Earth as a Home.
Stabilization Wedges Game, Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University. The Stabilization Wedges Game is a team-based exercise that teaches players about the scale of the greenhouse gas problem, plus technologies that already exist to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions and get us off the path toward dramatic and damaging climate change.
Carbon and Climate. University of Wisconsin-Madison. This site provides brief explanations with some images of climate change relative to the carbon cycle, atmosphere, fossil fuels, land use, land uptake, and ocean uptake. The site has an interactive applet in which users can change the amount of CO2 emitted from sources or put into sinks through the year 3000, and then see what the global temperature change will be based on those changes.
Environment. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). This website provides official statistics for U.S. CO2 emissions data (and other emissions) by state, region, country, and international data; power plant emissions, carbon emission factors, an annual emissions report (with graphs and maps that can be useful for teaching), and many technical reports and projections of emissions trends and energy use.
Climate Change Indicators, United States Environmental Protection Agency. EPA partners with more than 40 data contributors from various government agencies, academic institutions, and other organizations to compile a key set of indicators related to the causes and effects of climate change.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the panel that has been leading the international awareness/concerns about global climate change (global warming). The site offers the reports on the panel’s findings concerning climate change, the physical science basis (of climate change), impacts of climate change, and mitigation of climate change; press releases; graphics; and more information.
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) is the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy. The site provides data and reports on concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the role of the terrestrial biosphere and the oceans in the biogeochemical cycles of greenhouse gases; emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; long-term climate trends; the effects of elevated carbon dioxide on vegetation; and the vulnerability of coastal areas to rising sea level.
Climate Program Office. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA's climate goal is to: "Understand and describe climate variability and change to enhance society's ability to plan and respond". Their website contains summaries of the various programs and datasets available through NOAA, including observations and analyses, climate forcing, predictions and projections, and climate and ecosystems. Other features include spotlight events and information, featured events and research, and climate outlooks.
Exploring the Environment, NASA. A NASA Classroom of the Future. This site provides an Earth on Fire module for middle and high school students under the subheading Modules and Activities. The module examines human's impact on the environment and provides information under the subheadings Carbon Cycle, the Culprits, and Solutions.
Institute on Climate and Planets, NASA. This is a research, science education, and minority outreach program of the Goddard Space Flight Center. It is aimed at pre-college and undergraduate students and seeks to foster collaborations with students, teachers, and schools. Under the subheading Education Strategies, the site provides numerous atmospheric, climate change, and weather modules, free software, data sets and analysis tools. Under the subheading Climate Research, the site summarizes current scientific research, abstracts, etc. concerning climate change.
U.S. Global Change Research Information Office. Provides links to a collection of resources about global climate change and environmental education resources for K–12 educators and students.
Aspen Global Change Institute, Colorado. Provides a search interface that allows you to select different types of global change information by audience and format that you need, summaries of scientific articles on global change, and a list of publications, videos and programs for K–12 teachers, which are for sale.
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. This web site was created to disseminate factual reports and sound commentary... on the climatic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content... In this endeavor it attempts to separate reality from rhetoric in the emotionally-charged debate that swirls around the subject of carbon dioxide and global change." This site often offers another opinion in ongoing debates about global climate change with reviews of journal articles and editorials. The site has an interesting world temperature trend calculator, in which you input a beginning year (to 1880), ending year and range of latitude and longitude, and the calculator plots a graph of CO2 change through time. Under the section U.S. Climate Data, you can also plot temperature and precipitation trends for 1221 locations in the United States across the same time period. There is also an interesting experiment section that shows students how to collect and measure CO2.