Earth's Radiation Budget: Part 1
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection
Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as “Exemplary” in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.
This resource received a gold-star rating from a Panel Peer Review
These materials were reviewed using face-to-face NSF-style review panel of geoscience and geoscience education experts to review groups of resources addressing a single theme. Panelists wrote reviews that addressed the criteria:
- scientific accuracy and currency
- usability and
- pedagogical effectiveness
- Accept
- Accept with minor revisions
- Accept with major revisions, or
- Reject.
Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.
This page first made public: Oct 27, 2006
This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project
Summary
Learning Goals
- Introduce students to the Earths Radiation Budget (more info) ;
- Introduce students to the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library (more info) and associated visualization tools ;
- Provide students with a hands-on laboratory measurement experience;
- Topics covered include:
- albedo;
- clear sky solar, terrestrial, and net radiation;
- angle of incidence and absorbed solar radiation.
Context for Use
Teaching Materials
- Background information related to ERBE;
- Lab instructions and questions;
- Data access and visualization links;
- Excel file for modification;
- Link to how to write-up lab reports of this type;
Teaching Notes and Tips
Assessment
References and Resources
- The Earths Radiation Budget link provides good documentation for references and additional reading.
Other relevant links include:
- Here comes the sun from Plymouth State Meteorology Program.
- Sun Path
- Inverse Square law from University of Oregon.
- Planck Radiation Law Physics Applet (Physlet) from Davidson College Physics.



