Teaching Climate Change: Lessons from the Past2006 Workshop Montana State University, Bozeman Mt

Teaching with Real Data: Paleoclimatology Resources for Teachers (and other NOAA resources)

Connie Woodhouse National Climate Data Center, Boulder CO

J. Wellington

L. Thompson D. Hodell

P. Brown

OVERVIEW

• NOAA Education Policy and Resources

• Paleoclimatology Resources from the National Climatic Data Center, Paleoclimatology Branch

• Other Climate Change Resources from the National Climatic Data Center

Photo from NASA

From the NOAA Education PolicyAt NOAA, education means a process of engaging external audiences to build knowledge on topics relevant to the world’s atmosphere, climate, oceans, and coastal ecosystems in order to achieve greater environmental literacy, personal safety, and an improved economy.

NOAA and Education

http://www.education.noaa.gov/

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html

National Climatic Data Center, Paleoclimatology Branch home page

Our web site includes several source of education materials

EDUCATIONAL SLIDE SETS

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/index.html

CLIMATE TIME LINE Web site

PALEO PERSPECTIVES EDUCATIONAL WEB PAGES

Currently under revision

GLOBAL WARMING

ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE

NORTH AMERICAN DROUGHT

DATASETS AND TOOLS FOR DISPLAY AND ANALYSIS

The each of the main paleoclimatic proxy types have a search engine and graphical interface to search for and download data

CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTIONS

Global, hemispheric, localfrom a variety of proxy data

• air temperature• precipitation• drought• streamflow• atmospheric circulation (e.g., ENSO)• sea surface temperatures• others

SOME OF THESE HAVE VISUALIZATION TOOLS

Gridded Network of Summer Drought Reconstructions

tools for spatial and temporal display

From Cook et al. 2004

Gridded Network of Summer Temperature Reconstructions for Western North America: a tool for visualization

From Briffa et al. 1992

Colorado Streamflow Reconstructed from Tree Rings for Water Resource Managers, soon to be expanded to other areas of the western US

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/climateextremes.html

NCDC CLIMATE CHANGE RESOURCES

Includes links to the Climate Monitoring page with State of the Climate Reports, references on Climate Trends and Extreme Events, Indices of Climatic Change for the US, Global Warming FAQ, and links to various climate databases.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

NCDC’s GLOBAL WARMING FAQ