Browse Examples

Comparing Carbon Calculators part of Examples
Carbon calculators, no matter how well intended as tools to help measure energy footprints, tend to be black boxes and can produce wildly different results, depending on the calculations used to weigh various ...

Earth System Topics: Human Dimensions:Energy, Climate, Biosphere:Ecology, Human Dimensions:Policy, Atmosphere

Global Temperatures part of Examples
Students analyze the global temperature record from 1867 to the present. Long-term trends and shorter-term fluctuations are both evaluated. -

Earth System Topics: Atmosphere:Weather, Atmosphere, Climate

Modern CO2 part of Examples
Students compare carbon dioxide (CO2) data from Mauna Loa Observatory, Barrow (Alaska), and the South Pole over the past 40 years to help them better understand what controls atmospheric CO2. -

Earth System Topics: Atmosphere, Climate, Biosphere, Earth's Cycles:Carbon Cycle

Earth's Radiation Budget part of Examples
In this activity students explore the Earth's radiation budget using Earth radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) data archived at the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library (more info) . -

Earth System Topics: Biosphere:Ecology, Earth's Cycles, Climate, Atmosphere

Sun Spot Analysis part of Examples
Introductory students use Excel to graph monthly mean Greenwich sunspot numbers from 1749 to 2004 and perform a spectral analysis of the data using the free software program "Spectra". -

Earth System Topics: Climate, Solar System and Astronomy, Atmosphere

Mass Balance to Understand Atmospheric CFCs part of Examples
Students use an interactive online mass balance model help understand the observed levels of chlorofluorocarbon CFC-12 over the recent past. -

Earth System Topics: Atmosphere, Climate, Human Dimensions:Policy

Protein Evolution part of Examples
In this activity students explore the evolution of proteins by comparing 2D and 3D alignments of orthologs and paralogs. -

Earth System Topics: Biosphere, Evolution

Long Term Ecological Resources part of Examples
Students analyze data on temperature and precipitation collected from 26 different Long Term Ecological Research sites and compare them with annual net primary productivity. The students then form an ecological ...

Earth System Topics: Biosphere, Human Dimensions, Biosphere:Ecology

Searching Genbank part of Examples
An active problem-based assignment that uses the Genbank database to teach the basics of molecular biology and molecular evolution -

Earth System Topics: Evolution

Stratospheric Ozone part of Examples
Students explore observational data from ozone-sondes, TOMS, and UARS measurements to learn about changes in stratospheric ozone over the past several decades. -

Earth System Topics: Atmosphere, Climate