Woods Institute - K-12 Teachers

Climate Change

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Unit Stats

Grade level Upper High School to Undergraduate
About 16 days, in toto

Key themes

Scientific Evidence for Climate Change
Causes, Mechanisms, and Feedbacks of Climate Change
Human Activity and Climate Change
Climate Change Policy

Stanford Researchers: Professor Steve Schneider and Mike Mastrandrea

As a class, you have been appointed by Congress to serve on a "Blue Ribbon Panel" about climate change. You have been identified as independent experts who can study the problem in more depth and make policy recommendations to legislators. Congress has prepared a series of questions that they would like answered. As a class, we will study each of these questions in depth. At the end of our investigations, each of you will serve on a committee to prepare a presentation for Congress that will address one of their questions. You will need to be prepared to answer difficult questions during your presentation and provide strong evidence that backs up your claims.

What do we think is happening to the Earth's climate and why do we think so?
What evidence do we have that humans are contributing to climate change?
What are the possible causes of climate change?
What are greenhouse gases and how do they relate to climate change?
Aren't cycles of warming and cooling normal for Earth's climate?
Why should we be concerned?
How bad is it going to get?
What can be done and who needs to do it?

Alternate threads through these materials:

Thread 1: Climate Change Policy; 1 → Mini 4 → 7 → 8
Looks at how the climate is changing, how humans are driving this change, and the policy implications in the US and internationally.
(Note: the connection between Lesson 1 and Lesson 7 requires that students understand the role of greenhouse gases in anthropogenic climate change. Lesson 4 has suggestions for tailoring the material to suit your time and your students' needs. Alternately, there are numerous video clips on the web that will help students make the connection between greenhouse gases and anthropogenic climate change without using much class time.)
Thread 2: Science of Climate Change; 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 (optional)
Hands-on science investigations look at the mechanisms behind climate change, with a focus on anthropogenic forcings.
Thread 3: Evidence for Climate Change; 1 → 2 → 5
Students interact with different representations of data and draw conclusions about how the climate is changing.

K-12 Teachers

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Learning goals, lesson by lesson

Lesson	Lesson Overviews
Lesson 1 1 period	Present the new climate change unit to the students Introduce students to the idea that the climate of our planet is warming Have students draw conclusions about the Earth's climate from scientific evidence Help students understand that the idea of climate change is based on evidence from diverse sources
Lesson 2 1 - 2 periods	Present the concepts of weather and climate Introduce students to climate models Help students to understand the variables that contribute to climate change as well as the development of climate models Present evidence that anthropogenic forcings explain most of the warming we are currently seeing
Lesson 3 1 period	Review with students the size, composition, and behavior of the atmosphere Review how solar radiation interacts with the atmosphere and Earth's surface Identify sources of negative and positive forcings in the atmosphere-surface system
Lesson 4 3 periods	Understand the greenhouse effect and how concentrations of CO₂ contributes to warming Understand why some atmospheric gases behave as greenhouse gases and others do not Identify natural and anthropogenic CO₂ sources and sinks in the environment
Lesson 5 1 period	Understand how ice cores are used to study past climates Look at data about Earth's climate over the past 400,000 years Use data to investigate how cycles of warming and cooling correlate with cycles of CO₂ and CH₄ Understand why scientists are concerned about current warming trends in the context of cycles of warming and cooling through time
Lesson 6 2 periods	Demonstrate the different effects of melting sea ice and land ice on sea levels Present information about predicted impacts of climate change Prepare students to think about the unequal distribution of consequences of climate change around the globe
Lesson 7 2 periods	Introduce students to the factors that influence how much the climate will change over the next century Present the IPCC's emissions scenarios and allow students to evaluate the pros and cons of each To help students recognize the ways that choices we make now will impact climate change in the future
Lesson 8 2 - 3 periods	Help students to recognize the contributions to climate change from different countries Help students to recognize the unequal distribution of consequences from climate change Identify the magnitude of changes that need to be made in order to slow climate change Identify the types of changes that need to be made in order to slow climate change Equip students with meaningful strategies for addressing climate to present as part of their final projects

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