This NASA animation shows the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide over different time scales. Viewers can compare the last 400,000 years, last 1000 years, and last 25 years. The data come from the Lake Vostok ice cores (400,000 BC to about 4000 BC), Law Dome ice cores (1010 AD to 1975 AD) and Mauna Loa observations (1980 to 2005).

Humans have been on a mission to learn more about the red planet. Use this content guide to learn more about the challenges facing robotic explorers of Mars.

The original Native American story component lesson was developed as part of an Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and Washington State Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) project funded through an EPA Region 10 grant. The stories were told by Roger Fernandes of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe. Mr. Fernandes has been given permission by the tribes to tell these stories.As these lessons and stories were shared prior to the adoption of the Washington State Science Learning Standards in 2013, there was a need to align these stories with the current science standards. This resource provides a current alignment and possible lesson suggestions on how these stories can be incorporated into the classroom. This alignment work has been funded by the NGSS & Climate Science Proviso of the Washington State Legislature as a part of North Central Educational Service District's award.

In this activity, students use Google Earth and information from several websites to investigate some of the consequences of climate change in polar regions, including the shrinking of the ice cap at the North Pole, disintegration of ice shelves, melting of Greenland, opening of shipping routes, effects on polar bears, and possible secondary effects on climate in other regions due to changes in ocean currents. Students learn to use satellite and aerial imagery, maps, graphs, and statistics to interpret trends accompanying changes in the Earth system.

In this curriculum module, students in high school life science, marine science, and/or chemistry courses act as interdisciplinary scientists and delegates to investigate how the changing carbon cycle will affect the oceans along with their integral populations.

The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet and play a critical role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide through the interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. As a result of anthropogenic activity, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration (to 760 ppm) is expected to occur by the end of this century. A quarter of the total CO2 emitted has already been absorbed by the surface oceans, changing the marine carbonate system, resulting in a decrease in pH, a change in carbonate-ion concentrations, and a change in the speciation of macro and micronutrients. The shift in the carbonate system is already drastically affecting biological processes in the oceans and is predicted to have major consequences on carbon export to the deep ocean with reverberating effects on atmospheric CO2. Put in simple terms, ocean acidification is a complex phenomenon with complex consequences. Understanding complexity and the impact of ocean acidification requires systems thinking – both in research and in education. Scientific advancement will help us better understand the problem and devise more effective solutions, but executing these solutions will require widespread public participation to mitigate this global problem.

Through these lessons, students closely model what is occurring in laboratories worldwide and at Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) through Monica Orellana’s research to analyze the effect CO2 has on ocean chemistry, ecosystems and human societies. Students experiment, analyze public data, and prepare for a mock summit to address concerns. Student groups represent key “interest groups” and design two experiments to observe the effects of CO2 on seawater pH, diatom growth, algal blooms, nutrient availability, and/or shell dissolution.

This unit allows students to investigate past changes in Earth's climate. Students first explore relationships in climate data such as temperature, solar radiation, carbon dioxide, and biodiversity. They then investigate solar radiation in more depth to learn about changes over time such as seasonal shifts. Students then learn about mechanisms for exploring past changes in Earth's climate such as ice cores, tree rings, fossil records, etc. Finally, students tie all these together by considering the feedbacks throughout the Earth system and reviewing an article on a past mass extinction event.

In this activity, students reconstruct past climates using lake varves as a proxy to interpret long-term climate patterns. Students use data from sediment cores to understand annual sediment deposition and how it relates to weather and climate patterns.

This activity introduces students to stratigraphic correlation and the dating of geologic materials, using coastal sediment cores that preserve a record of past hurricane activity.

Patterns Biology is the culminating course in the 3-year high school Patterns Science sequence. Patterns Biology focuses on three-dimensional (3D) learning through culturally responsive, phenomena-based storylines that intertwine the disciplinary core ideas of biology with the scientific and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts as described in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The Patterns High School Science Sequence (https://hsscience4all.org/) is a three year course pathway and curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Each course utilizes:
- Common instructional strategies
- Real world phenomena
- Design challenges to engage students and support their learning.

For more information, contact us at info@pdxstem.org.

The curriculum is a combination of teacher-generated and curated open-content materials. The Teacher-generated materials are shared freely under a Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike Creative Commons License.

This is an interactive map that illustrates the scale of potential flooding in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida due to projected sea level rise. It is a collaborative project of NOAA Sea Grant Consortium and the US Geological Survey. It is a pilot project, so there is some possibility that the resource may not be maintained over time.

The high school earth and physical science unit moves through an exploration of tectonic plates, why and how they move, and the earthquakes that they cause. As the final project, teams learn about Early Warning Systems for earthquakes and how they have saved millions of lives in other countries. Teams take on a population in Oregon and design a ShakeAlert system to give them the seconds required to prepare for a mega earthquake.

These five modules introduce secondary science teachers to a powerful resource, from the Washington State Department of Health, entitled the “Washington Tracking Network” (WTN).  This is a tool for mapping (a) the distribution of numerous factors that influence public health, and (b) the inequitable distribution of health outcomes. This wonderful system naturally invites us to inquire about the intersections of biological, societal, and environmental issues. The overarching goal of these five  modules is to support teachers to design student activities that (1) inspire and connect students to real world health & environmental data, and each other, (2) promote clean air, land, and water, (3) promote the use of the Washington Tracking Network data mapping system, (4) support equitable, 3-dimensional learning, including the use of community wisdom to solve public health issues, and (5) use science for student action and leadership in response to current and historical misuses of science. These modules were created in collaboration with epidemiologists and communications professionals from the Washington Department of Health.

An applet about the Milankovitch cycle that relates temperature over the last 400,000 years to changes in the eccentricity, precession, and orbital tilt of Earth's orbit.

This activity addresses naturally occurring climate change involving ENSO (El-NiÃo Southern Oscillation). In this activity, students play the role of a policy maker in Peru. First, they determine what sort of ENSO variation is occurring. Then, they must decide how to allocate Peru's resources to manage for possible weather-related problems.

This activity is a research project in which students explore and synthesize key paleoceanographic evidence for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as found in marine sediment cores collected and analyzed during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 208 (Walvis Ridge).