In this lesson on weather and climate, students will create two graphs that show climate averages and weather data from the last month to understand the differences between climate and weather.
The resource includes an article on weather and climate, a writing prompt, and extension activities.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The resource provides helpful questions in the "Use of Evidence to Critique Claims" section that will help students think about the differences between climate and weather data.
Students will get to work with real weather and climate data for the activity.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with graphing data.
The instructions in the Preparation section are no longer current, but students can still access data using the Weather Channel website, Weather Underground, and the NOAA website.
Differentiation
Students could perform the "Sense-making" activity as a skit and write a script for Gracie and Aaron to answer the questions.
This lesson would be a good way to begin a unit on climate change. Students could discuss why it is important for scientists to collect climate data so that they can track changes in the climate.
Weather and climate are not the same. As Mark Twain put it "climate is what you expect, but weather is what you get". Weather is what happens on any given day. But climate is what happens on average over a 30-year period. This activity gives students a chance to use real weather data to compare what happens on a daily level compared to what happens at the climate level.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
MS-ESS2-5 Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses results in changes in weather conditions.
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
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.
