Natural Hazards & Climate Change Risks
Sarah Fortner, Carleton College
× Students characterize how climate change impacts natural hazards and pose research-based solutions to the county Emergency Management Agency. Presentations require the use of local data, created figures, ...

Evaluating Risks, Benefits, and Hazards: A Site-Selection Simulation Activity
Christopher Berg, Orange Coast College
An in-class jigsaw activity, in which students play the role of investigators consulting on behalf of an industrial client seeking an appropriate location to site a new facility to handle environmentally-damaging ...

Hurricanes Unit Overview
LuAnn Dahlman, NOAA; John McDaris, Carleton College
In this EarthLabs module, students will do hands-on experiments and study hurricanes in satellite imagery and visualizations. They'll also explore over 150 years of storm data to find out when and where these storms occur. If students are studying hurricanes during hurricane season, they can monitor the position and status of storms in real time. Hurricanes can serve as an exciting entry point into understanding everyday weather, or a culminating topic for an Earth system or environmental science unit.

Unit 2: Application of Concepts to Case Studies
Patricia Stapleton, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Lisa Doner, Plymouth State University; Lorraine Motola, Metropolitan College of New York
In Unit 2, students apply and evaluate foundational concepts about storm hazards and risk in the context of two cases studies: Superstorm Sandy (2012) and the Storm of the Century (1993). Through different ...

Hurricanes: Unit Overview
LuAnn Dahlman, NOAA; John McDaris, Carleton College
In this EarthLabs module, students will do hands-on experiments and study hurricanes in satellite imagery and visualizations. They'll also explore over 150 years of storm data to find out when and where these storms occur. If students are studying hurricanes during hurricane season, they can monitor the position and status of storms in real time. Hurricanes can serve as an exciting entry point into understanding everyday weather, or a culminating topic for an Earth system or environmental science unit.

Case Study 6.1- Adapting to a Changing World
Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
In this activity, students consider how several communities are adapting to climate change-related problems including drought's impacts on agriculture, loss of assets due to climate-related hazards, freshwater ...

Community Flood Risk Assessment from Rising/Surging Seas Project
Kevin Kupietz, Elizabeth City State University
Globally 634 million people, 10% of the world's population, live in coastal areas less than 10 meters above sea level. According to 2010 census data, 123 million people, 39% of the United States population, live in coastal counties with an estimated increase to this number by 8% in the 2020 census. As natural disasters have been seen to increase in frequency and severity in the past five years coupled with expected sea rises from climate change it is important that anyone involved with the safety and resiliency planning of their organization/community have an understanding of how to scientifically assess risk from flooding in order to mitigate and recover from the effects. This project allows students the ability to develop skills to utilize computer modeling systems and to apply the data to real world communities in examining risk to structures as well as different groups in the community.

Working with Climate Change Data
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students use spreadsheets to create graphs data related to climate change: sunspots, insolation, carbon dioxide, and global ...

Greenhouse Effect Lab
Krista Larsen, Carleton College
In this lab, students measure temperature changes inside soda bottles (one with CO2 added, the other with only air inside) as incandescent light is shined on them to model the Greenhouse Effect.

Tracking Sea Level and Paleoenvironments with Fossils
Pete Berquist, Virginia Peninsula Community College
Students use the Paleobiology Database Navigator to examine changes in sea level in southeastern North America throughout the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene Periods. They will plot the change in distribution of ...