Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Change Backpack
The premier climate change resource for informal educators!

Available through Clean Air-Cool Planet and the New England Science Center Collaborative, this popular teaching tool contains graphs, experiments, a climate change play, an imitation ice core, a compact fluorescent light bulb, and much more. The lessons are designed to expand or contract according to the audience and available teaching time. Staff, docents, and teachers are using the backpack in training programs throughout the Northeast, as well as in 124 National Parks. The entire contents of the Climate Change Backpack instructions and user manuals are available as free downloads. You can purchase the materials that are used as tools in the backpack at your neighborhood hardware and grocery stores or directly from Clean Air-Cool Planet at a cost which includes a handy backpack.

The instructions are simple and easy to follow though the Collaborative also offers a “Train the Trainers” program for people on how to use more effectively use the backpack (currently limited to the New England area only).

Climate Reconstruction Using Foraminifera Contained in Deep-Sea Sediments

What are deep sea sediments? What do they contain? How are they dated? How are they sampled? How are they used to understand climate change?

In this exercise, students will understand how deep sea sediments are collected and analyzed to identify various foraminifera species which are used to interpret global paleo temperature/climate change.  This is accomplished using pasta which is substituted for foraminifera which are collected and analyzed in order to develop a paleotemperature/climate change record.  Throughout the activity video clips have been inserted that will help students connect their work with the research of scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The Melting of Grinnell Glacier at Glacier National Park, MT

Is climate change really happening? If so, what effect is it having on the environment? How can scientists tell that change is indeed taking place? In this DELESE and Carlton College recommended activity you will observe how climate change has affected one of the largest glaciers in Montana and the implications it has for glaciers world wide!

• Grinnell Glacier Activities

  Grinnell glacier recession activity
  Grinnell glacier temperature graph
  Grinnell glacier recession map
  Grinnell glacier aerial photo
  Grinnell glacier activity graph paper

• Stages of Succession

  Grinnell glacier 1860
  Grinnell glacier 1890
  Grinnell glacier 1911
  Grinnell glacier 1920
  Grinnell glacier 1937
  Grinnell glacier 1945
  Grinnell glacier 1950
  Grinnell glacier 1960
  Grinnell glacier 1966
  Grinnell glacier 1970
  Grinnell glacier 1984
  Grinnell glacier 1993

Glaciers, Climate, and the Landscape

Ever wonder about ice ages? Climate change, perhaps? If so, take a look at Zach Smith's book, Glaciers, Climate, and the Landscape to learn more about the forces involved in transforming the surface of our planet!

From the book, "Glaciers are areas of snow and ice that have accumulated over many years and have at some time “flowed”. The snow that falls each winter accumulates in annual layers. Similar to the rings of trees, these annual snow layers on a glacier represent one year’s growth. As each layer is buried by new snow, the previous annual layers stay largely intact. The annual layers are still distinguishable even after the layers have been compressed and transformed into glacial ice."

 

View the book...

Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2: A Record of Climate Change

In 1993 the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 finished drilling through the Greenland Ice Sheet from the top to the ground bottom below the glacier. This ice core drilling project was directed by the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The recovered ice core record enabled scientists to piece together the most detailed record of Earth's climate for the last 110,000 years and some answers to the puzzle of how temperature, atmospheric gases, and other atmospheric particles interact to create climate.

WAIS Divide Outreach Program Poster

During the WAIS Divide preseason science meeting in lake Tahoe, CA, the WDOP presented a poster outlining its goals for educational outreach to take place over the life of the WAIS Divide project. These goals include: photo archive, movie archive, live presentations, interactive exhibit, field logbook, references, teacher workshops, K-12 student activities, collaborative programs, and links. All of these resources will be developed both during the the WAIS Divide field seasons and back in the USA during the International Polar Year(s) which run from 2007-09. Implementation will occur in stages with the end result being a large clearinghouse of information related to ice coring, field research, and global climate change. All of these educational resources will be freely available to teachers, students, and the general public.

Climate Change Records - of the past 800,000 years

The only thing you can ever really count on is change.  That is certainly true of Earth’s climate system.  The climate of Earth has changed from one defined by an atmosphere without oxygen, over 2.5 billion years ago, to one where human activities are affecting the change. Earth’s history is marked by the evolution of organisms dependent on the state of the climate to eek out an existence or adapt as climate continued to change.  We, as humans, are still on that path and must make accommodations to mitigate or adapt to the changing climate. Before we can decide how to proceed forward we must understand the details of the past.  In the last century, scientists have developed techniques for interpreting Earth’s natural records as one would read a book, with each page or layer of rock revealing hidden mysteries of Earth’s past.  Some of these techniques now allow us to read closely enough to interpret changes on time scales as short as individual years.  When trying to understand paleo or ancient climate change there are a number of natural records that are being used as proxies for understanding the conditions present on Earth in the past.  The paleo record goes back over one million years before the present (ybp) though the most detailed records extend to approximately 800,000 years before the present (ybp).  Four of the commonly used methods for interpreting Earth’s climate are presented on the accompanying classroom sized poster. They are the recent modern instrumental weather data, and three proxy records obtained by precisely interpreting natural records. The length of time that each of these four records extends into Earth’s past differs greatly and is displayed on the poster. The instrumental record extends back into time over 120 years before present, the pollen record extends back 60,000 years before present, and the ice core and deep sea sediment records extend back to 800,000 years before present. Great care and precision by scientists have been used to obtain and analyze these important records.  These data also geographically span the globe from pollen extracted from lake sediments in the United States to ice cores from Antarctica.  Our hope is that this poster will serve as an effective educational tool to introduce students to the basics of Earth’s climate records. For further investigation, the poster has an accompanying, always evolving, web site where detailed information about climate change, climate records, appropriate classroom activities, images, animations, professional development opportunities, references, and links to numerous other fantastic sources of information on climate change are available.

Poster design and execution by Zach Smith, Scott Battaion and Nick Deamer, Wright Center for Science Education, Tufts University.

WAIS Divide Travel Map

Ever wonder how long it takes to get to the WAIS Divide field camp? This animation shows you the route taken by Zach from the WDOP offices at Tufts University near Boston, MA, to the deep field ice coring location on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide. By no means a short jaunt to the local grocery store, the amount of time it takes to get from here to there can vary widely depending upon weather conditions, delays, and equipment. Your mileage may vary...