Short-Term Climate Change

Videos

Grades6, 7, 8Earth and Space Sciences, English Language Arts

This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by CK-12
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What it is

  • This online text describes El Niño and La Niña weather events and provides informative infographics, vocabulary terms, interactive questions, a summary, study guide, and overview.
  • The video highlights the connections between global warming and unusual weather patterns but also the debate around making those connections, including a video from 2008 that shows not everyone wanted to attribute changing weather patterns to global warming.

Teaching tips

Positives

  • Students engage with clearly outlined information and can hover over vocabulary terms to see their definitions. 
  • The video may spark debate or comments from students, which can get them participating in class.

Additional Prerequisites

  • Students should have a basic understanding of global warming.
  • Teachers and students will need to sign in to use some of the interactive features.
  • Note that the embedded video is from 2008. Advise your students to critically think about how things have changed since 2008.

Differentiation

  • The information can be gained in different ways to ensure understanding (videos, text, and text summaries).
  • When signed in, students have access to a toolbar where they can highlight, note-taking, view summaries, and additional resources about the chapter. 
  • Consider extending this lesson by having students watch Doubt and The Cost of Carbon and then reevaluating the video from the text.  Students can write reflection or response papers to these videos to complete the lesson.
  • Social studies classes can discuss risk analyses and cost-benefit analyses associated with acting on climate or continuing with "business as usual" to demonstrate that acting on climate is a win-win scenario that reduces risks.

From the scientist review

The resource explains in detail the most common feature that causes short-term variability in climate (El Niño and La Niño). This is caused by interactions of atmospheric circulations, winds, and ocean currents. Thus, there is no contradiction in the resource. It is recommended for teaching.
How we review resources

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