Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description Internet Resources

• Grade level: Middle School, High School

• Subject Area: Science

Brief Description

    During this lesson, students visit the "Greenhouse Effect Visualizer" (GEV) at Northwestern University. The GEV is a powerful interactive scientific visualization tool that students can use to analyze models of global climate changes related to theories about the Greenhouse Effect. Students work in small groups to study the various aspects of global weather and discuss the possibility of a Greenhouse Effect. Students can also visit other Websites with global atmospheric or oceanic models to visualize climate changes.

Objectives

Students will:

• Use the "Greenhouse Effects Visualizer" to examine global warming and climate changes.
• Develop and test hypotheses about changes in sunlight, temperature, emissions, and other variables using the Greenhouse Effect Visualizer.
• Use other scientific visualization tools to understand the Greenhouse Effect and other aspects of global warming.

Materials and Resources

    In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements: None.
2. Special software requirements: None.
3. Internet access: Medium-speed (28,000 BPS via modem), or High-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network).

Activity Description

    As students work in teams with the scientific visualizers, encourage them to develop hypotheses about global warming and the Greenhouse Effect, test their hypotheses using the visualizers, and reflect and discuss the results in their groups. Students should also use the criteria they developed in the prior lesson to guide their exploration of the visual models of global climate change. These criteria should be applied as students test variouis models of global warming for evidence of the Greenhouse Effect.

• When students use the "Greenhouse Effect Visualizer," they can examine a variety of variables, including temperature, sunlight, emissions, and Greenhouse Effect energy. These variables can be analyzed by year, quarter, or month, and the visual resolution can be changed as needed. (See Internet Resources below to access this visualizer.)

• Students can use other scientific visualization tools, such as the "GENESIS Earth System" global change model (for atmosphere, biosphere, and ocean), the "Global Climate Perspective System (GCPS)" for temperature and precipitation changes, the "IPPC Atmosphere-Ocean" model for changes in a variety of variables, and the "SSEC" model of emissions and storms (see Internet Resources below to access these visualizers).

• As students use these models, ask them to try to discuss what the models represent, to ask what data is used to create the models, and whether the underlying assumptions and criteria used for the models are consistent across the Websites. The criteria developed in the prior lesson are used to validate the evidence students collect to support or refute the Greenhouse Effect.

Internet Resources

• CoVis Scientific Visualizers
  [http://covis.atmos.uiuc.edu/geosciences/visualization/visualizers.html]
  CoVis visualizers include the weather visualizer and the greenhouse effect visualizer, and links to other climate visualizers and oceanographic visualizers.

• GENESIS Earth System Modeling Visualization
  [http://www.cgd.ucar.edu:80/ccr/viz.html]
  "The purpose of the visualization effort of the GENESIS Earth System Modeling Project is to aid in the analysis of global climate research and communicate its findings through the creation of broadcast quality video products. "

• The Global Climate Perspectives System (GCPS) [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcps/gcps.html]
  The GCPS maintains a variety of global climate modeling tools and data, including an interactive display of climatological data, interactive data access to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) baseline climatological anomaly data sets, climatological data sets, a global climate model, global maximum-minimum temperature data set, and numerous other climate data sets.

• Greenhouse Effect Visualizer
  [http://typhoon.covis.nwu.edu/gev.html]
  Located at Northwestern University, and developed as part of the CoVis project, the Greenhouse Effect Visualizer allows students to visualize various global phemonema related to warming.

• IPPC Atmosphere-Ocean Model Simulations
  [http://www.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/caom]
  "The global coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Model was designed for climate predictions at decade to century time scales." This site is technical, and may be best suited for advanced students with extensive science background.

• The SSEC Visualization Project
  [http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html]
  The Visualization Project at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has developed Vis5D. "The Vis5D system is very widely used by scientists to visualize the output of their numerical simulations of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. "

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