This activity develops student understanding of the relationship of weather and climate. Students use interview techniques to explore perceptions about local climate change among long-time residents of their community. Students then compare the results of their interviews to long term local temperature and precipitation records.
Activity takes about 3-4 classroom periods with several weeks for students to work on project assignment. Students need access to computers.
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Learn more about Teaching Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness»
Climate is determined by the long-term pattern of temperature and precipitation averages and extremes at a location. Climate descriptions can refer to areas that are local, regional, or global in extent. Climate can be described for different time intervals, such as decades, years, seasons, months, or specific dates of the year.
Climate is not the same thing as weather. Weather is the minute-by-minute variable condition of the atmosphere on a local scale. Climate is a conceptual description of an area’s average weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over long time intervals.
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Teaching Tips | Science | Pedagogy |
Technical Details
Teaching Tips
- Students will need help finding interview subjects and more time practicing their interviewing skills than the activity suggests.
- Educators should start out teaching about climate variability over relatively small distances.
- Educators may have to use climographs for their areas to identify comparable weather stations with long term temperature and precipitation records.
- There are other sources for local historical weather data that vary from community to community. Look for a more complete local historical record online.
- The assessment ideas suggest comparing 30-year records of temperature and precipitation in arctic cities to local cities. Include this assessment - it will strengthen the scientific understanding of the topic.
- Resource from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) may provide a more complete learning experience than this resource (listed in the reference list.) Educators may find that the UCS resource helpful in in improving this activity.
About the Science
- Activity teaches how to relate qualitative survey results to quantitative data sets.
- Students are asked to take mean weather data from the closest city to them. But there are only a few US cities tracked on the NOAA website and the closest one may not have data representative of their area. Educator may need to supplement weather data from other sources.
- Students interview long time community residents, analyze and interpret survey data and historic weather records.
About the Pedagogy
- Activity helps students develop interviewing skills.
Technical Details/Ease of Use
- Easy to follow lesson plan - all materials including worksheets and educator guide are easily accessible.
- Students will need access to a computer and may need help downloading data.
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Changes Close to Home --Discussion
I'm wondering if anyone found other easy weather data sources, since the NOAA one only offers a few regional locations to carry out this activity as written. ITs a great activity, I'd like to localize it, but not sure what data/weather source would meet the needs, any ideas?
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