United States and European Climate Data

Contributor
Your Weather Service
Type Category
Instructional Materials
Types
Data , Graph
Note
This resource, vetted by NSTA curators, is provided to teachers along with suggested modifications to make it more in line with the vision of the NGSS. While not considered to be “fully aligned,” the resources and expert recommendations provide teachers with concrete examples and expert guidance using the EQuIP rubric to adapted existing resources. Read more here.

Reviews

Description

This resource acts as a climate data warehouse in the form of graphs and tables for cities across the US, a linchpin for any three-dimensional climate unit. The resource is not written specifically for educators. Its sister website, http://www.climatedata.eu/ provides data in an identical format for major European cities.

Intended Audience

Educator and learner
Educational Level
  • Grade 5
  • Grade 4
  • Grade 3
  • Upper Elementary
Language
English
Access Restrictions

Free access - The right to view and/or download material without financial, registration, or excessive advertising barriers.

Performance Expectations

3-ESS2-2 Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.

Clarification Statement: none

Assessment Boundary: none

This resource was not designed to build towards this performance expectation, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.

Comments about Including the Performance Expectation
This resource provides a variety of data sets that students can combine to describe the climates of different regions of the United States.

Science and Engineering Practices

This resource was not designed to build towards this science and engineering practice, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.

Comments about Including the Science and Engineering Practice
To have students create their own graphs, teachers can provide students with the data tables or have students access the data from the websites themselves to create tables and graphs of their own.

This resource was not designed to build towards this science and engineering practice, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.

Comments about Including the Science and Engineering Practice
By analyzing the climate data, students will be able to discover patterns. They may notice, for example, that it is warmer near the equator, or that the curve of the temperature graph is reversed in the southern hemisphere, or that some locations experience significant seasonal changes in temperature, while others do not.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

This resource is explicitly designed to build towards this disciplinary core idea.

Comments about Including the Disciplinary Core Idea
These data sets provide students with information about a wide variety of locations and climate types.

Crosscutting Concepts

This resource was not designed to build towards this crosscutting concept, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.

Comments about Including the Crosscutting Concept
By observing patterns in climate data, students will be able to begin to develop explanations about climate. For example, they may notice that there are more hours of sunlight in July than in December in the northern hemisphere, or more hours of sunshine closer to the equator. This can be related to climate data about temperature.

Resource Quality

  • Alignment to the Dimensions of the NGSS: This resource is simply a source of data. The alignment to NGSS will depend on how the teacher and students use the data. By combining the data with other resources, students will get a clearer picture of climate variations around the world. These data sets can also be used to address Common Core Math Standards 3.MD.B3 (represent and interpret data).

  • Instructional Supports: The instructional supports needed will depend on the context in which the data sets are used.

  • Monitoring Student Progress: This resource is not intended to assess student learning.

  • Quality of Technological Interactivity: Typing the first few letters of a city name into the search bar will lead to a list of likely matches with available climate data sets. Students can also search by state (or country in the case of Europe) by clicking on the state name and reviewing the list of cities with available data. The website provides no way to manipulate the data on the website, but the data can be reasonably copied and pasted into a graphing tool to create the desired data sets.