Abstract:
This guide contains five activities designed for grades 6-8 that incorporate real data from NOAA to help students understand the phenomenon of El Nino. The activities are organized as a pathway with five levels of increasing sophistication. Students first need to understand how to access and interpret sea surface temperature data, then how to identify and measure changes in temperature over time.
... Along the way, they will learn how these changes relate to other physical systems, specifically ocean circulation and the phenomenon of upwelling. Ultimately, students will examine these relationships with respect to biological systems, using data on chlorophyll as a measure of productivity. The goal is for students to become experienced with these kinds of data and the tools for accessing them, so that, by the end of the module, they can continue to explore data sets driven by their own inquiry.
[Summary provided by NOAA.] 
Links
