The Extreme Weather pcMEL

The Models

Model A: Increases in extreme weather events are linked to climate change. Current climate change is mainly caused by human activities, such as fossil fuel use.
Model B: Over time, increases and decreases in extreme weather events are mainly caused by changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun.

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Student Handouts

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Extreme Weather 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.

• Extreme Weather pcMEL Model Plausibility Ratings (Acrobat (PDF) 146kB Jul10 25)
• Extreme Weather pcMEL Diagram (Acrobat (PDF) 185kB Jul10 25)
• Explanation Task (Acrobat (PDF) 52kB May6 24)

Lines of Evidence

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Evidence #2. Average number of acres burned by large fires together with average annual temperature. Source (fires): https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires

Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, University of Maryland
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: Since 2012, there have been more intense, extreme weather events around the world. Europe had the second-highest yearly temperature on record. The South Central United States had the costliest cold wave on record. The decade from 2013 to 2023 was the warmest. ever since pre-industrial times..
Evidence #2: Since 1983, the number of fires each year in the U.S. has not changed. The number of acres burned by those fires has increased. Also, since 1983, the average annual temperature in the U.S. has increased.
Evidence #3: In the last 100 years, global temperatures have increased. In that same time period, heavy precipitation events have also increased.
Evidence #4: Earth's orbit is elliptical. But, the shape of the ellipse is almost a perfect circle. In the Northern Hemisphere, Earth is slightly closer to the Sun in winter than in summer. Earth's surface receives more sunlight in summer than in winter.

Student Handouts

• Extreme Weather pcMEL - Evidence Texts Color (Acrobat (PDF) 984kB Jul10 25)

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 Extreme Weather MEL Resource Documents in Google Drive