Human activities, including CO2 emissions, deforestation and other forms of land cover change exert substantial pressures on the Earth's climate system. Changes in climate that have already begun will likely unfold over decades to centuries and will be shaped by the decisions of future generations. Given the enormous importance of climate to human societies, interest in climate change and the need to understand how it works will be increasingly important to future generations. This will create a need for both better public understanding and for an educated workforce that can apply knowledge of the climate system to formulation of sound energy and land management policies.

The work we will carry out is designed to address these needs through development of student climate change curriculum materials that combine new resources from a GLOBE carbon cycle science education initiative with NASA Earth observation data. By addressing a critical component of the Earth system, the GLOBE carbon cycle project was intended to introduce students to important concepts in Earth System Science and to provide the underpinnings for future climate change education. Here, we carry this vision forward, with climate change as an explicit focus and NASA Earth observation data as a core component of student activities. With a focus on terrestrial ecosystems, we will use data from NASA's MODIS/TERRA instruments as well as Landsat, combined with publicly available field data from our own research and other studies. By integrating these new materials with the GLOBE carbon cycle project, the climate change materials we develop will be highly relevant to GLOBE's upcoming Student Climate Research Campaign (2011-2012).

Over 100 countries and 50,000 teachers currently participate in the GLOBE program. We have already begun planning with the GLOBE Program Office and we expect that many GLOBE schools will be interested in participating in our climate change activities. Our connection with such an extensive school network will ensure the widest distribution and broadest use possible of the materials we develop. The work we do will have substantial broader impacts, beyond the immediate benefit of familiarizing students with Earth observation data and the science of climate change. Because climate change is a long-term process, and is subject to a myriad of misconceptions, this effort will help develop the knowledge and skills of future generations in an area that is becoming increasingly important to society.

We have aligned our development plan with both the National Resource Council's National Science Education Standards and the US Climate Change Science Program's Climate Literacy Principles, which provide input to science education standards at local, state, and national levels, further insuring that our products will be useful teaching materials. Our effort will involve and be relevant to schools spanning a range of demographic and socioeconomic conditions, ranging from rural to urban environments. Finally, our team brings together accomplished scientists and educators, including investigators from NASA's Carbon Cycle Science and Terrestrial Ecology programs, as well as educational outreach specialists with strong science backgrounds. We have also selected an external evaluator with a long history of evaluating science educational programs at both local and national levels.