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Interactive map for major hurricane tracks.

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Use this map layer to visualize large and destructive tropical cyclones that occurred between 1842 and 2015.

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Ocean Acidification: Data Inquiry Activities

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Ocean Acidification: Data Inquiry Activities

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Data Sets to Analyze showing real values for CO2 and pH to look at ocean acidification.

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Ocean Acidification: Overview and Data Inquiry Activities – MARE

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How did Mars Get Such Enormous Mountains

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How did Mars Get Such Enormous Mountains

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Video showing how Mars was tectonically active at one time to have features similar, or bigger, than Earth’s.

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Mars In A Minute How Did Mars Get Such Enormous Mountains

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Robotic Space Exploration - www.jpl.nasa.gov

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Image showing what the west coast looks like when El Nino affects the coast and when it doesn’t.

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A River in the Sky? Thanks El Nino! - Science On a Sphere

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The worst drought in over a thousand years of California’s history finally ended in 2014 thanks to an atmospheric river caused by El Niño.

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Game like lab to work through missions to see how polar areas were in the past.

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Online learning resources are more important today than ever before. Now, with help from NOVA's Polar Lab, educators can give students an immersive, interactive look at Earth and climate science from the safety of their home.

Despite the growing body of evidence showing the causes and current impacts of climate change and the scientific consensus on how human activity contributes to recent global warming, climate change denialism continues to be a problem across the country. If you are a science educator who teaches Earth and climate science, you are bound to hear your students tout misconceptions that they have picked up from politicians, news media, and, in some cases, other science classrooms.

To increase student understanding of climate science and Earth's climate history, NOVA has created the Polar Lab - a web-based game that uses 360 videos, interviews with scientists, and mini-games to send players on an immersive quest to understand how the poles are key to understanding Earth's climate.

The Polar Lab combines mini-games, clickable 360 landscapes, videos, and animations to take players onto the ice and into the laboratory in search of evidence to answer big questions about Earth's climate-past, present, and future. The Polar Lab puts students in the driver's seat as they work with host Caitlin at "Polar Lab HQ" to collect data from the field, answer questions about Earth's climate past, and play mini-games, moving through the story in three missions that happen across the globe.

Beyond the game, NOVA has developed the Polar Lab collection on PBS LearningMedia, a collection that includes resources for integrating the Polar Lab into your climate change lessons. In this collection, you'll find a lesson plan with suggestions for developing a teaching unit using the Polar Lab, several extension activities for additional assessment of student knowledge and skills, and a technical guide for navigating through the game. In addition, there are also several video resources that address the learning goals of the Polar Lab and include support materials for facilitating class discussions about the research findings featured throughout the game.

NOVA Polar Lab

Launch the Polar Lab to get started: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/polar/

NOVA Polar Lab Collection

Before you use the Polar Lab with your students, review our lesson plan for an overview of the disciplinary content and practices covered in the game, including NGSS performance expectations. You'll also find teaching tips with discussion questions that address learning goals throughout the game: https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/polar-lab/

NOVA Antarctic Extremes

Follow NOVA's Caitlin and Arlo as they explore how science is done on the 7th continent, Antarctica! Watch as Caitlin and Arlo discover what it's like to live in the coldest place on the planet, meet baby seals (also featured in the Polar Lab!), and find out where all the poop in Antarctica goes. The 10-episode digital series is available on Youtube: youtube.com/pbsterra

NOVA Polar Extremes

Supplement the content of the Polar Lab with NOVA's film on the climate science of Earth's poles. Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, takes you on a journey from deep time to the present, from Antarctica to Greenland, as he uncovers clues that tell us about the dynamic history-and future-of Earth's climate: pbs.org/polarextremes

Have questions about these resources or suggestions for additional resources we should add to the collection? Let us know at novalabs@wgbh.org.

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens.

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Bring Climate Science to the Digital Classroom with the Polar Lab

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Online, interactive resources for teaching climate science and climate change to middle and high school students

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Can create your own solar system to see how various sized planets move around a star.

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Build your own system of heavenly bodies and watch the gravitational ballet. With this orbit simulator, you can set initial positions, velocities, and masses of 2, 3, or 4 bodies, and then see them orbit each other.

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Game like lab where students play through analyzing characteristics of an exoplanet after landing there.

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NOVA's Galactic Resettlement team has received distress calls from aliens in desperate need of new homes. To help, you'll have to master the same techniques scientists use to find and characterize exoplanets - worlds orbiting faraway stars.

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Help displaced aliens find new homes by mastering the same techniques scientists use to find and characterize exoplanets - worlds orbiting faraway stars.

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Students work with variables of humidity and temperature to see what conditions are needed to create a storm.

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Unit 6.3 L10 Make a Thunderstorm - OpenSciEd

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Students use this simulation to make a thunderstorm by adjusting the humidity and temperature. This UCAR simulation is used in Lesson 10 of Unit 6.3.

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Video showing how the universe is expanding, and ‘dark energy’ is making parts of it expand faster.

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Gravity and the Expanding Universe | PBS LearningMedia

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Recent research has found that the universe is not only expanding, but that the rate of expansion is accelerating. To explain this acceleration, scientists have come to believe that there may be a repulsive force caused by "dark energy," an idea first developed by Albert Einstein.

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Interactive website that takes you through weather and climate, showing options how to fight climate change and how this can shape our climate going forward.

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Broadcast and digital collections: Decoding The Weather Machine

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Choosing Earth’s Climate Future | Interactive Lesson | Decoding The Weather Machine | PBS LearningMedia

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Students focus on the three interconnected choices global society faces as Earth’s climate continues to change—suffer, adapt, and mitigate—to analyze and predict current and future impacts to Earth’s systems. Using videos excerpted from NOVA: Decoding the Weather Machine, students explore ways that adaptation and mitigation strategies can work at various levels to minimize suffering and then develop an evidence-based action plan for their local community.

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Shows how ocean currents help in creating different zones of climate in the world.

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The Role of Ocean Currents in Climate

This ThinkTV segment demonstrates that ocean surface currents have a major impact on regional climate around the world, and explores the role of these currents in the creation of climate zones.

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This ThinkTV segment demonstrates that ocean surface currents have a major impact on regional climate around the world, and explores the role of these currents in the creation of climate zones.

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Discusses how putting CO2 on Mars would help create a greenhouse effect for life on Mars. Gives insight into systems and cycling on Earth.

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Description: Aside from ethical concerns, turning the planet Mars into a habitable planet would be a scientific challenge. The planet is too cold, lacks a useable atmosphere, and the lack of a magnetic field leaves it susceptible to space weather. Increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could solves two of these problems through the greenhouse effect. This thought-experiment could provide students an opportunity to better understand interactions between Earth systems.
Web Resource: Terraforming Mars - Wikipedia

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Terraforming Mars - The Wonder of Science

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Description: Aside from ethical concerns, turning the planet Mars into a habitable planet would be a scientific challenge. The planet is too cold, lacks a useable atmosphere, and the lack of a magnetic field leaves it susceptible to space weather. Increasing the amount of CO2 in

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Picture of Glacier National Park from 1913 and same spot in 2012.

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Glacier National Park Is Melting Away — The Wonder of Science

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Description:   Glacier National Park used to have 150 glaciers and it now has 25. Photographic evidence in this video shows how drastically the glaciers are being shaped by a warming planet. This phenomenon can be used to show two forms of freshwater (ice and water) in elementary s