GETSI Teaching Materials >Understanding Our Changing Climate > Student Materials
GETSI's Earth-focused Modules and Courses for the Undergraduate Classroom
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This module is part of a growing collection of classroom-tested materials developed by GETSI. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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For the Instructor

This material supports the Understanding Our Changing Climate GETSI Module. If you would like your students to have access to this material, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing GETSI teaching materials.

Welcome Students!

Climate Change is a topic that is widely debated in the media today, but what exactly does it mean? Why is it so important? Scientists consider climate change to be the defining challenge of the current age, where sea-level rise is one of the greatest impacts. In this module, you will learn about the main contributors of sea-level change and explore a wide variety of climate-related data. In order to better understand the causes of sea-level rise, including thermal expansion, ice mass loss, and changes in land water storage, you will analyze sea surface temperature, sea-level altimetry, GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), InSAR (Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar), and GPS data. By doing so, you will be able to estimate how much sea-level rise will occur this century. You will also investigate which communities are most socially and economically affected by sea-level rise. By the end of the module you will be able to:
  1. Analyze geodetic data to assess ice sheet changes and the causes of observed sea level, and will make predictions of future sea-level rise.
  2. Assess the societal and economic consequences of observed and projected sea-level changes on regions most vulnerable to sea-level rise.

Unit 1: Climate Change and Sea Level: Who Are the Stakeholders?

Depending on where you live, sea-level rise might not seem to affect your daily life. Yet it is important to think about how sea-level change is affecting different regions around the world. This unit contains case study examples for a coastal developing country (Bangladesh), a major coastal urban area (southern California), and an island nation (Maldives). What are the anticipated consequences of additional sea-level rise this century in these different places? In this module, you will consider the economic and social impacts of sea-level change. Your class will conduct a stakeholder analysis for one or more of the case study regions in order to better understand the effects of sea-level change.

Unit 2: Global Sea-Level Response to Temperature Changes: Temperature and Altimetry Data

You surely have heard of or studied global warming, yet how does this phenomenon affect changes in sea level? More specifically, what is the contribution of seawater thermal expansion to recent sea-level rise? In this unit, you will create time-series graphs of global averaged sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) data and assess the SST change during a given time period. Based on your calculated SST change, you will then calculate how much sea-level rise occurred due to thermal expansion of the oceans. You will then compare your calculated sea-level rise results to observed sea-level rise data from radar altimetry, and assess how much sea-level rise is attributable to thermal expansion.

Unit 3: Global Sea-Level Response to Ice Mass Loss: GRACE and InSAR data

Together, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain more than 99% of the freshwater ice on Earth. What is the contribution of their melting ice sheets compared to other sources of sea-level rise? In this unit you will use Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) ice mass loss data from Greenland and Antarctica to calculate sea-level rise due to their melting ice sheets, and use Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) ice velocity data to extrapolate which regions of the ice sheets are losing the greatest mass. You will then compare sea-level rise from melting ice sheets to the other dominant causes of sea-level rise, including thermal expansion, melting glaciers, and changes in land water storage. Lastly, you will extrapolate how much sea-level rise will occur by year 2100 based on recent observed rates of sea-level rise, and compare these values to sea-level rise projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Unit 4: Measuring Ice Mass Changes: Vertical Bedrock GPS

Most likely you carry a GPS receiver (i.e., a smart phone) around with you, but how can GPS be used to measure changes in ice mass? GPS records of bedrock surface elevation are used to monitor snow and ice loading/unloading on decadal and annual time scales. In this unit, you will calculate trends in bedrock GPS data and then use the original records to identify sites in Greenland that exhibit similar behavior. You will gain experience with the challenges and benefits of using bedrock geodetic data to study snow and ice mass changes. You will also observe the post-glacial rebound that occurs in bedrock after the ice has melted away.

Unit 5: Societal Implications of Climate Change: Stakeholder Report

You have learned by now that sea-level rise due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and ocean thermal expansion has significant societal and economic consequences. In this final unit, you will prepare a summary of the impacts of sea-level rise for relevant stakeholders by tying together all of your obtained knowledge and analyses from the previous units. You will integrate the stakeholder analysis in Unit 1 with the geodetic data (radar satellite altimetry, GRACE, InSAR, and GPS) of ice mass loss and sea-level rise from Units 2–4 in your analysis.


     

This module is part of a growing collection of classroom-tested materials developed by GETSI. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »