Hurricane season occurs every year and provides unique Earth System Science teachable moments. Here are several educational resources to help you teach about hurricanes.
Check out NESTA's other Teaching Resources.
Resource Collections and Comprehensive SitesCLEAN ResourcesThis set from the Climate Literacy and Awareness (CLEAN) collection has been rigorously reviewed. Resources support the Next Generation Science Standards and include activities, videos, and visualizations.National Hurricane CenterThis site contains data, including imagery and GIS files, tools, forecasts, and many educational resources. The mission of the center is to save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of hazardous tropical weather, and by increasing understanding of these hazards.Hurricanes and Tropical Storms from NASA.govNASA.gov brings you the latest hurricane images, videos and news from America's space agency.Hurricane Videos from NASA.govThis comprehensive search of the NASA.gov YouTube channel contains many videos of actual hurricanes viewed from space along with videos explaining various aspects of the science behind the storms.Windows To The UniverseThis set from the Windows To The Universe collection provides background information about hurricanes, an NBC LEARN video, "When Nature Strikes - Hurricanes" with supporting activity, an image gallery, and other resources.JetStream National Weather Service: Tropical WeatherThese pages from JetStream, the National Weather Service Online Weather School, provide background information about tropical weather and tropical cyclones. JetStream helps educators, emergency managers, or anyone interested in learning about weather and weather safety. | Individual ResourcesHurricane ExplorerInvestigate hurricanes and their impacts on human life using the Hurricane Explorer. Students adjust atmospheric and sea surface conditions to analyze factors that influence hurricane movement. Explore wind strength, storm surge, and precipitation as Atlantic hurricanes approach and travel over land.EarthLabs Hurricanes ModuleThis module from the EarthLabs collection contains nine different labs in which students explore satellite imagery and visualizations and do some hands-on experiments. Students learn what a hurricane is and how they form. They explore over 150 years of storm data to find out when and where these storms occur. Students examine the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and the dangers to life and property that they pose.InTeGrate Natural Hazards and Risks: Hurricanes ModuleThis two week module from the InTeGrate collection explores how hurricanes connect the ocean-atmosphere-terrestrial systems and society. Students evaluate how hurricane hazards and risks have changed with coastal development. They use data to track historic hurricanes and compare the impacts from different hurricanes. At the end of the module students engage in a role-playing activity to identify and represent stakeholders facing hypothetical hurricane evacuation in their town.Exploring and Animating GOES imagesThis chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolbook guides students through the process of locating Geostationary Satellite Server (GOES) images on the Web, exploring those images, and creating animations of storm and cloud movement with the freely available software, ImageJ. These animations are used to calculate the speed and direction of clouds and storms. To practice animating and measuring, students track the movement of Hurricane Ivan as it moved across the Gulf of Mexico and into Mobile Bay in September 2004. The same data analysis techniques can be applied to more recent storms. | ArticlesDid Climate Change Intensify Hurricane Harvey?This article from The Atlantic discusses how warm ocean surface waters fuel more intense hurricanes. The influence of human-induced climate change on ocean temperature exacerbates the situation. Scientists predict more intense hurricanes will continue to develop in the future.The Relationship Between Hurricanes and Climate ChangeThis article from The New York Times discusses how the science linking climate change to hurricanes is still emerging. However, global temperatures have been rising and scientific research and computer modeling suggest there will more intense storms in the future.Those Hurricane Maps Don't Mean What You Think They MeanThis slide show from The New York Times discusses how to interpret the cone of uncertainty around a hurricane's projected path. |