This interactive resource shows a graph of how many days a location's winter temperatures have been above normal since 1970.
Students can create the graphs in English or Spanish for a range of American cities.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource is easy to navigate and can be utilized in a wide range of grade and ability levels.
Students will enjoy looking at locations where they live or have visited, and will learn about how the climate is changing around them.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be able to read graphs.
Students would benefit from understanding how normal temperatures are calculated.
Differentiation
Cross-curricular connections can be made in math classes focusing on graphs and data, in social studies classes considering how different places are experiencing climate change, and in health classes that are learning about how our changing climate is impacting populations.
This resource would be a great tool for students to explore after learning about average temperatures. Younger students can read the graph for a location near them together as a class, while older students can be assigned different locations to compare and contrast.
To extend learning, have students use the data presented in the graph they read to predict the days above normal in the next several winters.
Scientist Notes
This graph shows temperature change above normal during winter periods from 1970-2022. As projected, shorter winter periods and anomalies could have impacts on human health, transportation and agricultural production. This resource is recommended for teaching.
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.
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-ESS3-5 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.
