In this short animation, students observe an animated graph and color-coded map of Antarctica that show Antarctica's ice loss over the last 20 years.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Students can look at the graph and follow along with it, making it useful to visualize the tons of ice loss per year.
Additional Prerequisites
This video has no sound and is short, so the teacher could repeat it, pause it, or play it slower to allow students to watch the changes as they unfold.
Students need to be familiar with climate change and how it is causing ice melt in Antarctica.
Differentiation
The teacher can pause the video multiple times for younger students to help them follow the variations in the graph.
Students can answer questions about the causes ice melt in Antarctica or connect it to the concept of albedo.
Teachers can ask students to write explanatory text based on the data presented in the graph to describe what is happening.
Middle school science teachers could implement this lesson on sea level rise to connect this animation to the effects of climate change.
Scientist Notes
This resource visualizes the loss in ice mass of the Antarctic Ice Sheet since 2002 as a result of anthropogenic climate change. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
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.