Arctic Warmth Becomes a Mid-Latitude Chill: Using Online Data To Teach Climate Change Science

Climate change education is a growing sub-discipline of science education. This research reports on the use of the fundamental principles of atmospheric science to explain the potential impact of regional climate change across global latitudes. Since the Arctic is responding to climate change faster than any other place on earth, it offers us a real-time opportunity to teach the larger scale impacts of abrupt regional scale change. In this research I merged elements of both the atmospheric and climate sciences into an online course. The course uses principles of meteorology to teach climate change science and demonstrate cause and effect relationships within the atmosphere. Students learn how climate change in one part of the world impacts weather elsewhere through the use of animated and descriptive video lectures that explain basic atmospheric thermodynamics processes. This paper includes a lesson plan that shows how climatic warming in the Arctic causes colder US winter weather. Formative and summative evaluations taken from course evaluations and exams suggest using meteorology to teach climate change is an effective way to educate students in high school and undergraduate college level courses about cross latitudinal influences of climate change.;Keywords: Climate Change, Global Warming, Arctic, Climate Literacy, Lesson Plan, Arctic Oscillation, Education...