This interactive world map allows students to see how precipitation patterns may change in the future based on several global warming scenarios.
Students can also read stories from various locations on the map about precipitation changes already affecting different regions and communities.
Teaching Tips
Positives
There are six different precipitation maps for students to explore that provide useful information for a number of possible questions about how climate change will affect weather patterns.
Students can click the camera icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen to save and download the current map view.
Additional Prerequisites
Students can click on the circular "i" icon to read more about each data set and warming scenario.
Clicking on the question mark in the top right-hand corner of the screen leads students on an informative tour of the resource.
The map legend changes with each map selected.
Differentiation
Geography and science classes could use this resource in a lesson about biomes. Students could examine how different warming scenarios would change the precipitation in a region and whether or not it would create a new biome.
In English language arts or creative writing classes, students could use the map to see how local precipitation would change if global temperatures rose by 3˚C. Students could write a short story, poem, or diary entry that is set in the future with those conditions.
Other resources on this topic include this lesson plan and activity on temperature and precipitation as limiting factors, this video on why climate change makes extreme weather worse, and this article on how climate change affects precipitation.
Scientist Notes
This map models different climate scenarios and attribution using data on precipitation from historical records. Students can select each scenario and explore the impact on different climatic zones, countries, and regions. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
MS-ESS2-4 Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth's systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.
4-ESS2-2 Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth’s features.
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.
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.
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.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.2.6-8 Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions, and changes in their environmental characteristics.
D2.Geo.1.9-12 Use geospatial and related technologies to create maps to display and explain the spatial patterns of cultural and environmental characteristics.
