Rising tides: Climate change and the sea

This lesson plan uses videos, NASA visualizations, and digital map projections to help students understand the connection between climate change and sea level rise. The lesson draws on the "Climate Refugees" story on the Powering a Nation website, and includes independent research and inquiry activities that allow students to explore sea level changes in North Carolina and around the world.

A lesson plan for grades 9–12 English Language Arts and Science

By Linda Schmalbeck

Satellite image of North Carolina\'s coast. (Photograph courtesy of NASA. More about the photograph)

Author’s note

These activities are suitable for both AP Environmental Science and Honors Earth and Environmental Science courses. For general Earth and Environmental Science courses, the portfolios suggested for small-group research projects in activity two would work better as the basis for individual lessons structured for the whole class.

Learn more

• DLESE teaching boxes: Changing sea level Excellent and detailed lesson plans on climate change with a geological focus.
• My NASA data lesson plans A series of lesson plans that permit students to download and work directly with NASA satellite-collected data.

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• Cape Fear River Watch: Offer several opportunities for environmental education and community development which include hands-on experiences for field trip groups.

Related topics

• Learn more about North Carolina, climate change, cryosphere, environmental science, geography, science, sea level, technology integration, and water cycle.

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When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.
— George Burns

From the Mississippi Delta to the Maldives Islands off the coast of India to the multitude of other low-lying coastal areas around the world, it’s estimated that over 100 million lives are potentially impacted by a three-foot increase in sea level. This is an ideal time, during the midst of an historic year of both related natural events and research developments tied to this critical global issue, to talk to the public about whether ice in our polar regions is truly melting, whether our oceans are indeed rising faster, and what these changes may mean to us.
— Dr. Waleed Abdalati, Cryospheric Sciences Branch, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

This lesson will give students the opportunity to evaluate key geographic, hydrologic, demographic, and social factors that may contribute to a range of potentially destructive impacts attributable to rising sea levels. The second activity will provide students with some tools to evaluate appropriate responses to protect threatened coastlines in North Carolina.

The lesson relies on internet-based tools, NASA-assembled data and imaging, and digital map projections of coastlines, as they are likely to be altered assuming various sea level scenarios. As a result, the activities work best in a computer lab or computer-facilitated classroom or, alternately, in a setting where students can work in pairs on a computer.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• analyze the physical factors that contribute to sea water encroachment in coastal areas.
• learn about the cryosphere.
• learn how the earth’s hydrologic cycle is affected by sea level rise.
• become familiar with free, geographically-based internet software and how these tools can be used to evaluate the potential impacts of sea level rise
• review the Earth’s hydrologic cycle

Lesson overview

The lesson includes three component activities, as well as an opening activity:

• In the opening activity, students read an article about a village in Alaska that’s threatened by rising sea levels.
• In activity one, students review the water cycle, watch a video, and use an interactive graphic to discuss projected changes brought about by climate change. Students brainstorm a list of key components leading to rising sea levels and work in groups to research one such component.
• In activity two, students share the results of their research and read about the potential impact of rising seas on the North Carolina coast.
• In activity three, students use interactive models to visualize the effects of rising sea levels on locations around the world.

Teacher planning

Materials needed

• computers with internet access during class periods (two students per computer)
• headsets or earplugs to allow student research groups to listen to short video and audio clips without disturbing other members of the class
• overhead projection — for interactive maps, short videos and interactive assessment tools
• whiteboard, blackboard, or other means of capturing student brainstorming

Materials for thermal expansion demonstration

• conical flask
• two-holed cork for flask
• thin glass tube
• long thermometer
• portable clamp-on reflector lamp
• 150-watt floodlight
• food coloring
• water
• marker

Student handouts

Time required for lesson

For detailed suggestions on how to plan the lesson using 50-minute or 90-minute periods, see the planning table below, or use the following general guidelines:

• Opening activity: Assigned as homework before the lesson.
• Activity one: 50 minutes in class if the opening activity is assigned as homework before the lesson or can be combined with activity two for a 90-minute period.
• Activity two: 90 minutes (works best as a 90-minute lab period or block)
• Activity three: 50 minutes in class.

Pre-activities

• Before beginning the lesson, test all links, interactive tools, and software to ensure they work on all class computers.
• Have the Flood Maps website open on your computer and ready to demonstrate before activity three. You may want to familiarize yourself with this tool before class.

Activities

Opening activity

1. As a homework assignment prior to beginning this lessons, or at the beginning of class, have students read the article “Alaskan Village Stands at Leading Edge of Climate Change” from the Powering a Nation website.
2. Have students respond to the questions in the “Climate Refugees” handout.

Activity one

Background

1. If students have not recently reviewed the earth’s water cycle, introduce the water cycle’s main features. Suggested resources include:
   • an interactive introduction to the water cycle from NASA
   • the short video “Water Water Everywhere” from NASA

   Emphasize the key point that water is a lot like mass or energy: For the most part, within the earth’s atmosphere, water cannot be created or destroyed. This means that water can move around the planet, it can change states from gas to water to solid, but at all times the total amount of water on the planet remains constant.

   Starting from this understanding, the question of how sea level can be rising becomes a search for ways that water can move from other states, forms or locations, to the salt water oceans, which cover about 70 percent of the earth’s surface. The most obvious of these is through the melting of snow and ice (all frozen water taken together is often referred to as the cryosphere) since about two-thirds of the earth’s fresh water is bound up as snow and ice. However, the warming climate is causing the cryosphere to melt at a rapid rate.

Discussion: What could account for a rise in sea levels?

2. Begin the lesson with a discussion of the article “Alaskan Village Stands at Leading Edge of Climate Change” and the questions students responded to as part of their homework assignment.
3. Show the video “Moving to Higher Ground” and the interactive map “How Shorelines Change in a Warming World” on the Powering a Nation website. Use the map to compare projected changes in the shoreline at Newtok with those that might be expected to occur on Manhattan. Ask students to compare the economic consequence of flooding in Newtok and Manhattan.
4. Initiate a discussion that addresses two basic questions:
   • What evidence is there that sea levels are rising?
   • What physical changes could bring about a rise in sea level?

   Arrange students in groups of two or, at maximum, three. Provide each group with paper and ask them to brainstorm in their groups and write a list of either:

   • mechanisms they know would lead to sea level rise or
   • topics that need additional research in order to answer the two questions

   Advise students that simply listing “global warming” would be an insufficient answer. They must also explain how global warming would produce a rise in sea level. For example, global warming increases surface temperatures, warmer temperatures cause ice to melt, and the melt water eventually enters the ocean.

5. After about five to ten minutes of brainstorming in small groups, ask the students to share their ideas as a whole class. As the students share their ideas, write their responses on a black board or type them into a computer-projected document. This will result in what may seem like a random and chaotic list of factors, some of which are incomplete, inaccurate, or repetitive. If possible, avoid commenting on the suggestions offered and simply write them down. If discussion lags, encourage possible answers by asking questions designed to elicit one of the following key factors that might result in sea level rise:
   • average global temperature increase
   • thermal expansion due to sea temperature increase
   • melting ice due to surface and sea temperature increase
   • reduced albedo — and feedback loops (Read more about albedo in this Encyclopedia of Earth article.)
   • slope and composition of coastal land
6. When the key topics have been covered — probably several times in the case of some key topics — ask the students to take a moment and look over the list to see if there are a smaller number of common topics that cover all of the points listed. Take suggestions on how to group the ideas that have been collected. The objective is to end up with a group of topics that are close to the key topics list. This should be carefully organized to show where the initial topics fit under the newer main group headings.
7. Once the class is satisfied with this list, ask them to watch the following NASA video, “Shrinking Oceans, Rising Seas” (4:31 minutes).
   

   You must have javascript and Flash Player to play this video.

   
   

   Download video (Right-click or option-click) | About the video

   Ask the students to identify any factors that might lead to sea level rise that they might have missed during their discussion.

8. When the video is finished, ask the students if they think any changes should be made to the list of topics they have generated. By the end of the brainstorming session, the list of factors should resemble the key factors listed above.
9. Divide the students into five groups with each group assigned one of the numbered topics from your discussion. Provide each group with the appropriate portfolio, based on its area of study. Their task is to investigate the two questions:
   • What is the evidence that sea level is rising?
   • What physical changes could bring about a rise in sea level?
10. Portfolio #2, “Thermal Expansion of Water,” includes a demonstration in which the teacher uses colored water in a conical flask to show how water expands when it is heated. Instructions are available in PDF format.
11. Have students follow the instructions in their assigned portfolios. Each portfolio guides students through the investigation of one of these five factors using general reference materials and review articles, scientific data, and a case history from news reports that illustrates the impacts of sea level rise. The portfolio includes investigations and reading questions to be completed within the portfolio text either by writing in the answer on a hard copy of the portfolio or by typing the answers directly into an electronic version — depending on how you distribute the portfolio and depending on the availability of computers. Note: If students have access to computers outside of class, it may also be convenient to assign the preparation of the questions in each group’s portfolio as homework if 50-minute classes are used. Students should be encouraged to work collaboratively on their portfolios both face-to-face and through social networking tools.
12. Have the groups report their findings to the class, either in a future class period (50-minute classes) or in the last 30 minutes of a 90-minute lab or block class. Responses to guiding questions in the portfolio can be used to assess student knowledge at the end of this lesson.

Activity two

1. If you’re using a 50-minute class structure, open the second day of the lesson by briefly reviewing the discussion and assignments of the previous class. Allow about 20 minutes at the beginning of the second day for students to research the information described in each of the group portfolios. If you’re using a 90-minute lab or block, stop the investigative phase when 30 minutes remain in the class period. Students should be encouraged to discuss their topics within their groups as they prepare to present their findings to the class.
2. Have each group report on the following:
   • Summarize evidence that either refutes or supports that sea levels are rising.
   • Explain the role that their portfolio topic could play in sea level changes.
   • Discuss the quality of the information — how convincing, or unconvincing, is the evidence for sea level rise based on the information provided in their portfolio?
3. When there are about 30 minutes remaining in the class, distribute the rising tides evidence handout and tell students to complete the table in the handout based on the presentations by their classmates and discussion that follows each presentation.
4. Following the presentations, ask the students to discuss whether or not there is evidence that sea level is rising.
5. For homework, assign the following readings:
   • “Rising Sea Level Redefines NC Coast” from the Raleigh News and Observer ¹
   • “Rising Sea Levels: A Strategy for NC” from the Raleigh News and Observer ²
   • “Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Overview: Southeast from the U.S. Global Change Research Program (also available in PDF format)

   To complete the homework assignment, students should bring three written policy recommendations that North Carolina should adopt in order to respond effectively to predicted sea level changes.

Activity three: Future sea level rise

1. Ask students to summarize their findings in the homework assignment about the present and possible future impacts of sea level rise on the North Carolina Coast and how their policy recommendations might help mitigate the impacts.
2. Review the data concerning sea level compiled by NASA using NASA’s interactive Climate Time Machine. (Omit the carbon emissions option, as carbon’s role in climate change was not directly addressed in the previous activities.)
3. After exploring each of the other Time Machine options, call on the students to summarize the evidence based on direct measurement of sea ice, sea level, and surface temperatures. Ask students to identify some of the potential consequences.
   
   The Climate Time Machine relies on data collected from direct measurements of current or past conditions that affect sea level. But how can we use what we know about climate conditions and factors that influence sea level general warming trends to predict future conditions?

   Scientists use computer-based climate models to estimate future changes, one of the expected effects of global warming. The models rely on scientific and mathematical knowledge to generate complex algorithms that, when combined with specific data, can play out scenarios of what is likely to happen in the future if current trends continue. The following figure shows a compilation of measurements and model-generated sea level change predictions.

   

   Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates, records, and predictions of relative sea level rise between 1800 and 2100.

   Prior to the late 19th century, sea level changes were estimated from the past using geological and ice core measurements; between the late 19th century and the present, instrument-collected data is shown on the graph; and sea levels in the future as predicted by several different climate models are shown in the last panel of the figures. The future predictions include many uncertainties of land-ice changes, permafrost changes, and sediment deposition, so the shaded area is very broad to reflect the possible range of outcomes. (The top curve is the extreme worst-case scenario and the bottom curve shows the best-case scenario.)
   
   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reflecting the views of scientists from over 130 countries, has confirmed that global sea level has already been rising at an average rate of 1.7 mm per year during the 20th century. Most of this increase is attributable to glacier melt and thermal expansion of oceans. The additional possibility, that warmer temperatures could break up the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, still widely debated among climate scientists, would lead to a devastating five-meter or more increase.

4. To explore the potential impact of this range of sea level rise, instruct students to reorganize themselves into pairs with each pair sharing a computer. The students should then go to the Flood Maps website.
5. Have students use the mapping tool at this website to complete the procedure and questions detailed in the geographical predictions handout. Note: The teacher’s guide for the geographical predictions handout provides a list of cities that can be substituted for those currently listed on the student handout. The cities that are most likely to be adversely affected by sea level rise are shown in bold typeface. Coastal topography is the main reason for differences in vulnerabilities among these population centers.
6. Conclude the lesson by using the NASA Sea Level Quiz. Suggested formats for using this online assessment tool include:
   • Paired students administering the quiz to each other.
   • Creating a spelling-bee-style competition with questions and answers projected by the teacher.
   • Reformatting the questions to a standard paper-based test.

Assessment

• If you choose to assess the opening activity, assess by students’ responses to the climate refugees handout.
• Assess activity one by students’ responses to guiding questions in their portfolios and/or responses to the rising tides evidence handout.
• Assess activity two by grading students’ written policy recommendations for coastal North Carolina.
• Assess activity three by students’ responses to the geographical predictions handout.

Web references

For more information or background reading, see the following websites:

Coastal Zones and Sea Level Rise

This page from the Environmental Protection Agency discusses the current and future state of sea level rise around the United States, along with its expected consequences.

“Scientists Get a Real ‘Rise’ Out of Breakthroughs in How We Understand Changes in Sea Level”

This article from NASA shares the scientific methods and tools used to study changes in sea level. Includes a visualization of sea level rise on earth as seen from space.

Current Sea Level Rise

Broad overview of the topic from Wikipedia. Includes links to further reading.

Planning table

Notes

1. Wade Rawlins, "Rising sea level redefines N.C. coast," News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), June 3, 2007. [return]
2. Orrin H. Pilkey, "Rising sea levels: a strategy for N.C." News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), Nov. 29, 2009. [return]