Ice & Albedo: Earth's Energy Balance
Why Earth can have two climates for the same Sun, and the tipping point between them.
Works on Chromebooks, tablets, and any modern browser. No plugins or downloads.
What students do
Students watch sunlight split at the planet: bright ice reflects it away, dark ocean soaks it up. Cooling grows ice and ice cools further, so the climate rolls across a landscape of stable valleys with a tipping point between them. A volcanic winter can tip Earth into a frozen "Snowball", ages of volcanic CO2 can melt it back out, and turning the feedback off flattens the landscape so the tipping point disappears.
Standards alignment
Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth's systems result in changes in climate.
Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth's surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.