1. Using Web-based Data Sets to Enhance Student Understanding of Climate Change and Data Analysis Kathryn A. Hoppe Green River Community College, Auburn, Washington Description: Student Preparation: - This exercise is aimed at entry-level undergraduates. - Students should know how to navigate the WWW and have basic graph-reading skills. Goals: 1.Make simple observation of graph-based data & discuss how to recognize patterns (or a lack of any pattern). 2.Discuss how climatic patterns vary over different geographic & temporal scales. 3.Discuss how local geography & economic conditions are predicted to change as climatic conditions changes. Examples of on-line data sets and in-class discussion questions: Websites used for this exercise: Global CO 2 levels over the last 200 years (from Global Warming Art): http://www.globalwarmingart.com/ CO 2 levels & Antarctic temperatures over the last 650,000 yrs (from the EPA): http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html Global fossil carbon emissions (from Wikipedia): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_to_Y2004.png Annual mean temperature change in the United States since 1880 (from NASA): http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ Global annual mean surface air temperature change since 1880 (from NASA): http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ Effects of climate change in Washington State (from the Washington State Dept. of Ecology): http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange Contact Information for K. Hoppe: E-mail: khoppe@greenriver.edu, Webpage: http://www.instruction.greenriver.edu/khoppe/ Fig. 3. Changes in temperature (red line) and in atmospheric CO 2 levels (yellow) over the past 649,000 years. The vertical red bar at the end is the increase in atmospheric CO 2 levels over the past two centuries. (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc_fig1.html) Fig. 2. Mean global surface air temperature change relative to 1951- 1980 mean. Green bars = 95% confidence limits for both the annual and five-year means. (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs) Fig. 1. Mean surface air temperature in the contiguous 48 United States (1.6% of the Earth's surface) relative to the 1951-1980 mean. (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/) Students are asked to discuss factors including: 1. What is the noise to signal ratio of different data sets? / How do you determine if data show a significant trend? 2. What are the different temperature scales of regional vs. global temperatures and why is there a difference? s? 3. What is the relationship between CO 2 and temperature over the last 400,000 years / How does the time scale of anthropogenic change compare with the those of prehistoric changes? U.S. Temperature from the Washington State Dept. of Ecology web site. Students are asked to evaluate web-based data sets that show how CO 2 levels and temperatures have changed over the last 200 years and over the last 400,000 years. The EPA website provides many graphs of changes in greenhouse gasses over both short and long-term time scales. Temperature data for the last ~200 years is available from NASA in both a tabular and graphical format. Students are asked a series of questions designed to get them to critically evaluate the scale of changes, the signal to noise ratio of the data, and the significance of long-term vs. short term trends. They are also asked to consider what factors other than CO 2 levels might affect local temperature records. Finally, students are asked to read information provided by the Washington State Department of Ecology about how local climatic conditions are predicted to change and to discuss the local sociological and economic implications of future climatic changes.