Climate Change                                           

Overview of Climate Change

1. Pertinent Readings

            Spaulding & Namowitz, Heath Earth Science, ch. 31 (pp. 586-589) and ch. 18 (pp. 336-337)

2. Pertinent E2C Workshops and Resources

 

Earth’s Variable Climate Spectrum

Apr. 2000—Scientist: Joseph Ortiz

Paleoclimatology

Jan. 2001—Scientist: Joseph Ortiz

 

Climate Change Studies: "Developing Our Knowledge of Climate In The Last 150 Years"

Feb. 2002—Scientist: Alexey Kaplan

“Cores and Climates”

Feb. 2003—Scientist: Gerard Bond 

 

 

3. Key General Concepts

 

4. Questions about the Key Concepts (These are to be answered and submitted.)

  1. Briefly explain, using a diagram, what causes seasons in the mid-latitudes.
  2. What are three important causes of climate change?
  3. What evidence supports "global warming"? What are some of the potential impacts during the next half-century?
  4. Describe three types of "proxy data" used to reconstruct climates of the past?
  5. What are three types of deep-sea sediment that have been used as climatic indicators?

5. Educational Technology

 

            CD-ROMs provide one efficient technology for instructional media. “EarthView Explorer” is a CD-based educational program developed by LDEO scientists led by Drs. Ray Sambrotto and O. Roger Anderson. It provides a variety of activities that utilize real data about aspects of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. It also includes a “climate change” simulation section. “EarthView Explorer” is distributed through It’s About Time, the Herff-Jone Education Division.

 

6. DLESE review

            Open www.dlese.org. Follow the appropriate prompts to locate at least two web sites dealing with imaging. Send the URLs as part of your course submission materials. If possible, provide feedback to DLESE using the Community Review System.


7. Planning for Your Course

     1. What are the three most important things you think that students should understand about climate change stories in television or print media news stories?
     2.  Identify representative state science education standards pertinent to this session’s theme.
     3.  Describe one activity in which students might utilize information or data available through the resources you used for this session.

Optional Opportunity

             

In the first part of this session, we’ll review the general concepts about Weather and Climate explored in Session 2. We’ll also have a chance to share pertinent experiences with our classes and other studies since the previous class.

Then we will use educational activities that bring out important concepts about what causes seasons. Of special use will be the AMS Project Atmosphere’s teacher-training module on "Sunlight and Seasons." During the educational technology portion of class, we will explore a web-based activity about changes in insolation at various locations.

We will also look at some of the general concepts concerning climate change. Of special interest will be a look at ways in which we can reveal what climates were in the past. This leads into the other part of this session.

Dr. Kaplan explores how we have learned about climate and climate change through a historical survey that begins with ship observations of ocean surface, analyses of sea surface temperatures, sea level pressure and surface winds from 1850s to the present observation of global scale climate variability possible through satellites. As teachers whose students will ask about stories in the media predicting great effects from climate change, it is important that we comprehend how our knowledge of climate has developed.

Next, we visit Rusty Lotti Bond, Curator of the Lamont-Doherty Deep-Sea Sample Repository, the largest collection of material from the below the ocean floor. For more than fifty years, the Repository collection of sediment samples has provided material for scientists worldwide to research many facets of our earth's systems. Deep-sea cores contain microfossils and minerals that can be used as environmental indicators, or reveal climate change. Variations of color and texture resulting from changes over time in the sediment are clearly visible in the cores. The dynamics and significance of these changes will be explored in the workshop.

            You can learn a lot about the Deep Sea Sample Repository at www.ldeo.columbia.edu. Then go to the Data Repository or Research sections and explore the Core Lab web pages. Archived versions of this session can be found in the Earth2Class web pages: www.earth2class.org (K- 12 connections—see both archived series.)