Teaching Tips

• A good lecture aid for talking about increasing global temperature and linking it to real-world historical events.

About the Science

• On the first graph, an orange line shows long-term trends by averaging temperatures over a five-year period. Purple error bars represent the uncertainty on measurements.
• On the second graph, the observation is that despite differences in the ways the scientists develop their averaged temperature records, the four different and well-known temperature records show remarkable agreement. 
• Comments from expert scientist: Resource is a very effective presentation.
• It gives details behind unusual years.

About the Pedagogy

• The NASA temperature graph includes hyperlink points on the graph providing text information on historical events that provide context for students on why sudden changes in temperature sometimes occur (volcanic eruption, El Niño, La Niña, etc).
• These very effectively show how natural events can affect Earth's global temperatures for short periods of time within the context of global change trends.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• The visualization is clear and easy to read, and the links work, though you get a flickering of the descriptions of some specific points if you pass over them with the mouse.

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