Evaluating Natural and Human Effects on Earth's Climate
Provided by: My NASA Data|Published on: April 18, 2025|Last updated: September 26, 2026
Grades: 9, 10, 11, 12
Type: Activity - Classroom
Subjects: Biology, Earth and Space Sciences, Mathematics
Authors: My NASA Data
Location: Earth
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Synopsis
- This mini-lesson or bell ringer activity engages students with a bar graph of human and natural causes of radiative forcings since 1750 in order to understand the effects of human activities on the climate.
- This resource includes a link to the Earth System Data Explorer, an interactive tool that allows students to further explore factors that contribute to climate change around the world.
Teaching Materials
Positives
- Students work with real data, there is a downloadable handout with the graph enlarged on the page, and there is a link for Google classrooms.
- This activity is a great introduction to climate science for students.
Prerequisites
- The answer key for the activity must be requested in advance via a Google Form.
- The resource includes a link that explains radiative forcing in more depth, which may be helpful to students.
- The Earth System Data Explorer contains a video tutorial which can be helpful to preview in advance.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Discuss the causes of climate change in more depth with your students using this resource.
- Use this activity as a bell ringer before this science lesson on modeling climate change solutions.
- Use this activity as a bell ringer before this math lesson on global temperature rises.
This resource from NASA provides a static bar graph of the human activities and natural causes that have contributed to climate change since 1750. The additional data links provide interactive graphs from the USEPA with data from 1979 to 2023. The "Earth System Data" link provides an interactive map with multiple drop-down options to learn about contributions to climate change around the world. The datasets contains sufficient historical data as well as up-to-date data from reliable sources. This resource is recommended for a classroom lesson about climate change.
Teaching Tips
Standards
Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
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