Skip to main content
MIT
Climate
Search

Main navigation

  • Climate 101
    • What We Know
    • What Can Be Done
    • Climate Primer
  • Explore
    • Explainers
    • Ask MIT Climate
    • Podcast
  • MIT Action
    • News
    • Events
    • Resources
  • Search

Main navigation

  • Climate 101
    • What We Know
    • What Can Be Done
    • Climate Primer
  • Explore
    • Explainers
    • Ask MIT Climate
    • Podcast
  • MIT Action
    • News
    • Events
    • Resources
  • Search
Educator GuideDecember 14, 2021

Clouds, Models, and Climate Change Educator Guide

TILclimate clouds guide for educators
Photo Credit
Pixabay via Pexels

 

This Guide for Educators was developed by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative as an extension of our TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) podcast, to make it easier for you to teach climate change, earth science, and energy topics in the classroom. It is an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about clouds."

Browse all TILclimate guides for educators.

Description

How do clouds form? How are clouds affected by (and how do they affect) climate change? Students create a cloud in the classroom, and then investigate climate models and real-time cloud observation data.

Download the Guide as a PDF
SWBAT:
  • Explain that clouds need a nucleus around which to form.

  • Understand that climate models can predict future climate patterns, but that factors such as carbon emissions make specific predictions uncertain.

  • Describe observed and predicted changes in precipitation in the continental US.

Skills:
  • Map reading
  • Observation
Standards:
  • HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.

  • HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems.

Disciplinary core ideas:
  • ESS2.A Earth Materials and Systems

  • ESS2.D Weather and Climate

  • ESS3.C Human Impacts on Earth Systems

  • ESS3.D Global Climate Change

 

What is included in this Educator Guide
  1. How to use TILclimate Educator Guides (Download)
     
  2. Full Educator Guide (Download)
    • Includes both Teacher and Student pages
       
  3. Teacher pages (Download)
    • Includes materials, discussion questions, background resources, and adaptation suggestions for science, social science, and ELA teachers
       
  4. Student pages (Download)
    • Cloud in a Bottle hands-on demonstration

    • Climate Models and Uncertainty reading

    • Precipitation Observations and Predictions

    • Clouds and Particulates investigation

    • Community Science: NASA GLOBE

Listen to the episode

 

Browse all TILclimate guides for educators
Share
facebook linkedin twitter email compact
by TILclimate Podcast
Topics
Atmosphere
Climate Modeling
Student Skills
Read & Discuss
Map Reading
Modeling
Observation
Hands-On

Related Educator Guides

Winter Storms and Climate Change Educator Guide

We know Earth is warming, so why do we still get extreme winter storms? Students learn about albedo, climate, weather, the jet stream, and the polar vortex through hands-on demonstrations, data visualizations, and reading scientific writing.
Get the Guide

The Ocean and Climate Change Educator Guide

Modern climate change is causing our ocean to warm and changing the ocean’s chemistry. Students directly experience the ability of cold and warm water to uptake carbon dioxide and learn about ocean acidification. They explore the role of the ocean in the climate and one tool scientists use to understand ocean warming. Then, they are challenged to communicate one of the Ocean Literacy Principles to a chosen audience.
Get the Guide

Climate Models and Uncertainty Educator Guide

Earth's climate system is enormously complex, and scientists develop climate models to understand how climate change will play out in different parts of the world. Students play a climate resilience game, and then explore the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report to learn more about how climate scientists handle uncertainty in models.
Get the Guide

Geoengineering and Climate Change Educator Guide

Geoengineering includes a host of technologies and practices that seek to reduce the amount of heat trapped in Earth’s atmosphere. Some of these technologies could have significant side effects that are not well understood. Who decides when or how to engineer the Earth’s atmosphere?
Get the Guide

MIT Climate News in Your Inbox

 
 

MIT Groups Log In

Log In

Footer

  • About
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility
  • Contact
Environmental Solutions Initiative
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge MA 02139-4307
Communicator Award Winner
Communicator Award Winner