Climate

Read the book What Is Climate? by Ellen Lawrence. Discuss climate terms such as desert, tundra, temperate, tropical, precipitation, etc. Write each word and illustrate with a picture.

Where I Went On A Pretend Vacation activity:  Research an area's climate and write a postcard about the climate of the place as if you went there.

Take a position on a strategy people could do to mitigate climate change. Write an opinion paper outlining your reasons for supporting this position, using credible sources.

View pictures of a tropical climate and an arid climate, including pictures that show animals, plants, and humans of the region. Analyze which climate is wetter, drier, hotter, colder. Which has more rainfall? How could that be measured? Do the same with pictures of a temperate and a polar climate.

Find the high and low annual temperatures in a region with a tropical climate, and the high and low annual temperatures in a region with a continental climate. Subtract to find the temperature range of each climate region. What does temperature variability tell us about these climate types?

Watch the video clip, The Effect of Land Mass on Climate. Water stores more heat energy than land, and releases it more slowly. Determine the percentage of land versus ocean in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Southern Hemisphere. Does the difference in this ratio support the statement that the Southern Hemisphere has a more moderate climate than locations in the Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude?

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Some kinds of weather are more likely than others in a given region. Weather scientists forecast the weather so that local communities can prepare for and respond to these events.

Emphasis is on local forms of weather.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land. They live in places that have the things they need.

Weather is the combination of sunlight, wind, snow or rain, and temperature in a particular region, at a particular time. People measure these conditions to describe and record patterns over time.

The four seasons occur in a specific order due to their weather patterns.

Sunlight warms Earth's surface.

Examples of structures could include umbrellas, canopies, and tents that minimize the warming effect of the Sun on Earth’s surface.

Sunlight warms Earth's surface.

Assessment of temperature is limited to relative measures such as warmer/cooler.

Seasons are created by weather patterns for a particular region and time. Local patterns create four distinct seasons.

Wind and water can change the shape of the land.

Examples of solutions could include different designs of dikes and windbreaks to hold back wind and water, and different designs for using shrubs, grass, and trees to hold back the land.

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly over a time period longer than one can observe.

A variety of natural hazards result from natural processes. Humans cannot eliminate natural hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts.

Examples of design solutions to weather-related hazards could include barriers to prevent flooding, wind-resistant roofs, and lightning rods.

Climate describes a range of an area's weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.

Scientists record patterns of weather across different times and areas so that they can make predictions about what kind of weather might happen next.

Examples of data could include average temperature, precipitation, and wind direction.

Some sources are renewable over time, and others are not.

Examples of environmental effects could include air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around.

Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments.

Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land, tropical plant fossils found in Arctic areas, and fossils of extinct organisms.

Human activities in agriculture, industry and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, ocean, and air, and even outer space.

Nearly all of Earth's available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere. Assessment is limited to oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, and polar ice caps.

Examples could include the influence of the ocean on ecosystems, landform shape, and climate; the influence of the atmosphere on landforms and ecosystems through weather and climate; and the influence of mountain ranges on winds and clouds in the atmosphere.

Assessment is limited to a single environmental change. Assessment does not include the greenhouse effect or climate change.

Current scientific models indicate that human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, can contribute to the present-day measured rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature. Natural activities, such as changes in incoming solar radiation, also contribute to changing global temperatures.

Mapping the history of natural hazards in a region, combined with an understanding of related geologic forces, can help forecast the locations and likelihoods of future events.

Emphasis is on how some natural hazards, such as volcanic eruptions and severe weather, are preceded by phenomena that allow for reliable predictions. Others, such as earthquakes, occur suddenly, and are not yet predictable.

Examples of natural hazards can be taken from interior processes (such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), surface processes (such as mass wasting and tsunamis), or severe weather events (such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods). Examples of data can include the locations, magnitudes, and frequencies of the natural hazards. Examples of mitigation strategies can be global (such as satellite systems to monitor hurricanes or forest fires) or local (such as building basements in tornado-prone regions or reservoirs to mitigate droughts).

Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

The ocean exerts a major influence on weather and climate by absorbing energy from the Sun, releasing it over time, and globally redistributing it through ocean currents.

The complex patterns of the changes and the movement of water in the atmosphere, determined by winds, landforms, and ocean temperatures and currents, are major determinants of local weather patterns.

Because these patterns are so complex, weather can only be predicted using probability.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems