This lesson is designed to help students gain knowledge in accessing current weather data and in using the MY NASA DATA Live Access Server (LAS) to specify and download historical satellite data.

Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures. This brochure provides a comprehensive overview of the Aqua spacecraft, instruments, science, and data products.

Corals feed on algae that thrive in the sunlit water surrounding a reef. However, when water temperatures get too warm, the algae food source dies and corals turn a whitish color. Through scientific observation, it has been determined that coral bleaching is the cause. Students will use authentic satellite data to determine when the sea surface temperature meets the criteria to induce coral bleaching.

Scientists have studied the physical properties of clouds and have developed instruments onboard satellites to characterize the types of clouds they see below. Some satellites have instruments that allow them to measure rainfall as well. For this lesson, students will use satellite data to compare precipitation (rainfall) to cloud type

The Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planets Climate? is a set of student activities and teachers guides designed to connect NASA Earth science research with the teaching and learning of core science and mathematics concepts and skills while addressing national education standards. The four modules cover: 1) Temperature Variations and Habitability, 2) Modeling Hot and Cold Planets, 3) Using Mathematical Models to Investigate Planetary Habitability, and 4) How Do Atmospheres Affect Planetary Atmospheres. Scientific inquiry and the research tools used to do research play a major role in the lessons. Presented with a science problem, students seek answers and consensus by experimenting with physical and computer models, collecting and analyzing their own measurements, and conducting comparisons with real world data from satellites and ground-based observations.- NASA missions and related Earth and space science topics provide the real world problem context for student investigations.- It aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.

This classroom activity explains how clouds and pollution in the atmosphere are important to climate, and the need to study whether pollution may be changing Earth's climate in undesirable ways. It introduces NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) mission. The activity includes building a MISR-lite model to demonstrate how looking at the same thing (i.e., Earth's atmosphere) from different angles produces a 3-dimensional effect that gives much more information than just viewing it from one angle, and helps scientists establish a baseline of information about current conditions in the atmosphere. The activity was originally published in Technology Teacher, a magazine published by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA).

One of the most studied and important ocean currents of the world lies along the eastern coast of the United States and is called the Gulf Stream. It derives its name from its source region of warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. In this lesson, students will use authentic satellite data to explore the seasonal changes in sea surface temperature of the Gulf Stream.