Weather & Climate

Overview: The overarching goal of Earth as a System is Essential: Seasons and the Seas (EaSiE) is to transform the traditional middle school study of terrestrial seasons and weather into an exploration of the dynamic interactions between Earth’s land, water, atmosphere, and the living world. This Weather and Climate lesson series allows student to explore how weather conditions are measured and to collect weather-related data over time in a particular area. This is used to distinguish climate from weather and leads to considering the weather in their backyard as a system with interacting components.

A prerequisite lesson series, Systems, can be found here.

This lesson sets the stage for the big idea: Interactions among the air, land, and water play an important role in the weather conditions and climate in a particular location.

Collecting Weather Data

Buoys

Note: This lesson series is intended to serve as a relevant context for the teaching and learning of weather-related ideas in middle school. It is not designed to replace a comprehensive curriculum, but rather enrich and integrate authentic Earth systems science content into instructional units using NOAA resources.