The Climate Change pcMEL

The Models

Model A: Climate change is caused by humans who are releasing gases into the atmosphere.
Model B: Climate change is caused by increasing amounts of energy released from the Sun.

Show me information about the models.

Hide

Student Handouts

×

Climate Change pcMEL

Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

• Climate Change Model Plausibility Ratings (Acrobat (PDF) 144kB Jul10 25)
• Climate Change MEL – Diagram (Acrobat (PDF) 183kB Jul10 25)
• Explanation Task (Acrobat (PDF) 52kB May6 24)

Lines of Evidence

×

Evidence #2. Solar activity levels over time. Credit: Wright Seneres.

Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, Temple University
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Evidence #1: Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been rising for the past 50 years. Human activities have led to greater releases of greenhouse gases. Temperatures have also been rising during these past 50 years.
Evidence #2: Solar activity has decreased since 1970. Lower activity means that Earth has received less of the Sun's energy. But, Earth's temperature has continued to rise.
Evidence #3: Satellites are measuring that more of Earth's energy is being absorbed by greenhouse gases.
Evidence #4: Increases and decreases in global temperatures closely matched increases and decreases in solar activity before the industrial revolution.

Student Handouts

• Climate Change MEL – Evidence Texts BW (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Jun24 24)
• Climate Change MEL – Evidence Texts Color (Acrobat (PDF) 1.8MB Jun24 24)

Other Resources

This Plausibility Ranking Task (PRT), which may be completed prior to using any MELs, helps students to understand the role of evidence in supporting or refuting models.

• Plausibility Ranking Task (Acrobat (PDF) 76kB May6 24)

Virtual MEL

The Google Drive folder below contains MEL resource documents in the Google formats. In order to maximize the flexibility of our activities, the MEL Project Team wanted to make more resources compatible with virtual settings. We have made our MEL scaffolds available in Google formats, so that they can be copied, modified, and uploaded more easily on a variety of platforms and devices. Please note that to access all the materials for each MEL scaffold, you will need a Google account. View the README file first.

• README First Instructions & FAQ (Acrobat (PDF) 70kB May24 21)
• Virtual Climate Change MEL Resource Documents in Google Drive