In this self-paced lesson, students will learn about the properties of greenhouse gases including, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The lesson includes a pop-up glossary to assist students with vocabulary.
The lesson includes math connections and provides students with opportunities to practice using graphs.
This lesson is divided into five sections. The lesson is self-paced, so students can complete each section at their own pace.
Additional Prerequisites
Familiarity with stoichiometry and writing chemical equations will help students complete the activities. Teachers could develop scaffolds for the stoichiometry questions to help students who may be less familiar with chemical reactions.
Students should be familiar with graphing and navigating simulations.
This is part 6 of 9 in Explaining Climate Change, a series of lessons from The King's Centre for Visualization in Science.
Differentiation
Students could complete the lesson in small groups or pairs.
Students could make graphic organizers and record information about the five greenhouse gases.
Teachers could pair the lesson with this hands-on experiment on the greenhouse effect.
Scientist Notes
There is no contradiction in this model in explaining the greenhouse effect, energy balance, water vapor, atmospheric concentration, infrared radiation, radiative forcing, and hydrological cycle. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS-ESS2-4 Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth’s systems result in changes in climate.
HS-ESS2-6 Develop a quantitative model to describe the cycling of carbon among the hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
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 systems.
HS-ESS3-6 Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.
