Climapse

The unit is based on a primary module to raise awareness of the problem. It is hard to observe climate change by simply comparing subsequent years. But if you look on a slightly larger scale it is easy to see drastic changes all over Europe, such as melting glaciers, and more frequent tornadoes due to higher average temperatures.

This will be covered in the introduction to the unit which is followed by different lessons and their various activities which can be combined flexibly.

The lesson begins with a shocking video about tornadoes and their destructive power in Modena, northern Italy. Students see that here in Europe we are directly affected by the increase of extreme weather conditions, that were uncommon in the past. This introduction is followed by interactive exercises that raise awareness of different aspects as a consequence of climate change.

This will include extreme weather conditions like heavy floods as well as geographical and biological indications. The exercise shows the melting glaciers in Europe and the effect of earlier blooming due to warming. We tried to use examples all over Europe to show the implication for us all.

The lesson ends with large scale phenomena shown by the climate time machine from NASA. This will make it clear that saving our local environment will save our earth.

The teacher introduces the importance of numbers in climate and meteorology, how meteorological events can be described through data variations in time, and how atmosphere pollution can be controlled through concentration numbers. The teacher motivates the students with shocking figures about atmospheric pollutions, strong winds that caused damages, or other impressive figures.

The focus is then shifted towards numbers. How can we quantify and express quantitative measures on physical quantities that contribute to describe event and their range? The need for definition of physical quantities, together with their units is presented. Their usefulness in terms of scientific community interchanges is stressed.

The teacher then introduces automatic data acquisition systems, how they work, how they guarantee a continuous uninterrupted data acquisition and data flow. The way a physical quantity is measured by microcontrollers and sensors is then presented to the students.

Next, the teacher explains how a physical atmospheric quantity is converted into a number and then into a physical unit measure in a microcontroller (here we used Arduino UNO R3).

Following on from this, the teacher presents the way data can be stored on a microcontroller for education, and how they can be analysed.

Built-in temperature sensors

In this task, students log the data from the built-in temperature sensors as a starting point. As a result, they do not have to wire any external sensors.

External temperature sensors

The second task with the micro:bit is using a cheap external sensor. This is more challenging, as students have to consider aspects such as including an external library to read the data from the sensors and how to wire the external device correctly.

Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS) is a freely available database for exploring the Earth's past, present and future climate. You can register and obtain access to the CDS and its toolbox. 

Students learn how to access meteorological data for specific events (time frame and location) and how to plot this data using Python.

EduMed is offered by the Université Côte d’Azur, France, for educational purposes. It is a wonderful, easy-to-use, powerful tool that allows the analysis of a great number of atmospheric parameters. The great thing is that you can find events back in time. The teacher needs to explain the correlation between the shown parameters and the weather recorded on extreme event day.

The EO Browserby ESA makes it possible to browse and compare full resolution images from the complete archive of Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P, ESA’s archive of Landsat 5, 7 and 8, global coverage of Landsat 8, Envisat Meris, Proba-V, MODIS and GIBS products. You can choose between different areas of interest, select a time range and analyse data from different sources.

This activity is also an opportunity to underline that sharing reliable information is a good way to avoid misinformation. The next step of this activity will be to collect all the data analysed by teachers and students all around Europe to see what is happening in different place. If you want to share your results with us you can share it via Twitter using #ClimpaseSDGs.