Instructions:
Teacher discusses with students how Western scientists often look to lakes and oceans to understand the impacts of climate change. Oceans play a significant role in understanding and slowing climate change as they are massive heat sinks. Teacher reviews this vocabulary word with students along with atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere using the Heat Sinks.pdf.
Western STEM Connection:
Scientists can also study past and current climates by examining cores taken from aquatic ecosystems. Ice core samples, for example, help scientists understand past ecosystems. Ice core samples from polar and glacial ice can be very useful to scientists for finding climate information as far back as 800 000 years. Scientists can also understand how climate change impacts current aquatic ecosystems by taking sediment cores from lakes. This was done in the following study:
Rühland, K.M., Paterson, A.M., Keller, W., Michelutti, N., and Smol, J.P. 2013. Global warming triggers the loss of a key Arctic refugium. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: 280: 20131887. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.1887
Teachers familiarize themselves with the study by reviewing the following sources.
- CBC- Overview of Study: https://rb.gy/xpz0d
- Nunatsiaq News: https://rb.gy/9jrfc
- Queen’s University Press Release: https://www.queensu.ca/pearl/media/hudsonbay/
Teachers then introduce the study to their students using the Lake Cores Study.pdf and by playing the following recording: https://rb.gy/3cc6s
Next teachers have students engage in the following graphing math extension activity found in the documents titled Diatom Sediment Data.pdf and Diatom Data-mania.pdf.
