Bomb Cyclones - They're Explosive!
Jacqui Degan, Cape Fear Community College
Storms can have devastating impacts on coastal communities. Typically, tropical storms like hurricanes get the most attention, but there are other types of storms that occur at more northern latitudes that can be ...

Using a Town Meeting Scenario to Explore the Impacts of Hurricane Sandy
Jennifer Haney, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
In this role-playing activity, students are assigned into groups which will explore specific roles related to Hurricane Sandy. A mock town meeting scenario where the community is requesting input for how to address the challenges of rebuilding their homes, businesses, and infrastructure allows for the class to learn more about the multiple perspectives, issues, and interests resulting from this devastating disaster.

Is There a Trend in Hurricane Number or Intensity?
Todd Ellis, Western Michigan University
This lab guides students through an examination of the hurricane record to determine if there is a trend in hurricane intensity over the past 40 years and introduces some issues related to statistics and ...

Investigating the Effect of Warmer Temperatures on Hurricanes
Serena Poli, Eastern Michigan University
Students investigate the link between ocean temperatures and hurricane intensity, analyze instrumental and historical data and speculate on possible future changes.

Exploring the Link between Hurricanes and Climate using GCM Results
Cindy Shellito, University of Northern Colorado
This activity requires students to examine global climate model output available online and consider the potential impact of global warming on tropical cyclone initiation and evolution. As a follow-up, students ...

Student Lead Discussions: Articles from the Literature and Final Writing Assignment
Dave Dempsey, San Francisco State University
This is a two-stage assignment. The first stage is a student-led discussion of a set of closely related articles selected by the instructors from the climate change literature. The second stage is an 8-12 page ...

Hurricane Investigation
Melinda Huff, Northeastern Oklahoma Agricultural and Mech Coll
This is a simple homework assignment that will reinforce topics discussed in lecture as well as enabling students to search and analyze information on the web.

Hurricane Tracking
Lisa Doner, Plymouth State University
This is a homework assignment that focuses student attention on ongoing hurricane/tropical storm development, often during the height of hurricane season. The students are directed to a web site (I like ...

Poleward Heat Transport Jigsaw
E. Christa Farmer, Hofstra University
Based on great plate tectonic exercise by Sawyer et al. (2005 JGE), this small-group exercise with maps of data about earth's energy balance helps students visualize poleward heat transport.

Confirmation of the IPCC Prediction re: Increased Storminess
Robert Kuhlman, Montgomery County Community College
A two-part culminating activity for a meteorology/climatology unit in an Earth Science course centered upon data acquisition and analysis regarding the confirmation of the IPCC predicition regarding increased ...

Tale of Two Cities (and two hurricanes): New Orleans
Thomas Juster, University of South Florida
This is an activity that uses the spreadsheet program Excel to explore the origins of subsidence in New Orleans. There are two versions. The first is a traditional Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum (SSAC) module ...

Paleotempestology Lab
Kira Lawrence
Paleotempestology Lab: this lab activity is designed to help students gain experience in relative and absolute dating techniques as well as a sense of how scientific investigations proceed.

Mapping Hurricanes - Working with Digital Vector and Raster Data Sets
Scott White, Fort Lewis College
Scott White, Fort Lewis College Summary This lab exercise shows students how to create a map of the track and winds of a hurricane. Hurricane Jimena from 2009 is examined using both vector and raster data. Context ...

Tropical Cyclones, Sea Surface Temperature, and Beyond
Danielle Schmitt, Princeton University
The activity will use historical data of sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone origin and/or tracks to identify trends. Students use Arc GIS to explore projected SST changes and predict areas where tropical ...

Climate Change and Atlantic Hurricanes: A GIS Inquiry
Chris Van de Ven, Albion College
Students make hypotheses about how hurricane numbers, locations, or intensities have been changing, and then use hurricane tracks, wind speed, barometric pressure, and dates to test their hypotheses.