Going Further
Variations
- Design and run your own climate change scenario using the skills learned in this lesson.
- Use the reports tool to write up the lab report describing your experiment.
- Explore other ways to visually explain climate change.
- Explore other climate models to learn how they are similar and different.
- Discuss the question, "what is being done about climate change, locally, nationally and regionally?"
- Discuss the question, "what can you, the individual do? and what are our alternatives?"
Other Resources
EdGCM Video Tutorials
Other Data
With some knowledge of the parameters of climate change, students can generate other experiments using EdGCM's Setup Simulations feature.
Other Techniques
Teachers could create the visualizations and use them as demonstrations instead of having the students work through the lesson. This could be very helpful for teachers with limited time or resources or for teachers of younger students.
Other Tools
Other GCMs are available for free download but all require significant programming skills and substantial computing resources to operate. Some examples:
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research—General info on climate change and modeling.
NCAR/UCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM)
Do it yourself climate prediction
The primary research GCM developed by NASA/GISS—Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The original NASA/GISS global climate model ( This site may be offline. ) —(GCM) with a user-friendly interface for both PCs and Macs
CCCma model info and interface to retrieve model data
NOAA / Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory CM2 global climate model info and model output data files
University of Victoria Global climate model— free for download. Leading researcher on this project was a contributing author to the recent IPCC report on climate change.
Related Case Studies
Within the EET there are several related case studies that explore the the causes and / or impacts of climate change. These lessons could be used to develop a complete unit on the topic.
Is Greenland Melting—Explore working conditions on the Greenland Ice Sheet, measure melt area extents and rate of glacial movement with My World GIS.
Understanding Carbon Storage in Forests—Compare field collected data with results produced by a forest biomass model to understand the process and challenges scientists face when doing terrestrial carbon cycle research.
Exploring Regional Differences in Climate Change—Produce and analyze graphs to compare climate predictions among U.S. states through the year 2100.
Whither Arctic Sea Ice?—Animate thirty years of sea ice images, measure the ice extent each year, and then graph and analyze the results.
Exploring NCAR Climate Change Data Using GIS—Use ArcGIS to visualize and analyze NCAR climate change scenario.
Using NASA NEO and ImageJ to Explore the Role of Snow Cover in Shaping Climate—Use ImageJ to explore and animate satellite images of reflected short wave radiation, snow cover, and land surface temperature downloaded from the NASA Earth Observation (NEO) Web site. Then use NEO's Image Composite Editor (ICE) to observe, graph, and analyze the relationship between these three variables.
