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Earth Science Education
Weather Web Sites
- USA Today’s Weather Page. Aside from posting today’s weather map, this site provides information about weather basics, hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, hydrology, and a topic index. The Ask Jack site provides excellent links to K-12 lesson plans, weather photographs, and other information for the classroom.
- CNN’s Weather Page. Provides interactive four-day forecasts, all you have to do is type in a Zip Code, State or World city. This site also provides U.S forecasts, global forecasts, and global weather maps.
- Doppler Color Radar, The Weather Channel
- National Weather Service
- Local Weather, by Intellicast, worldwide coverage.
- Accuweather, personalized weather reports.
- Penn State University Weather Pages. This site provides technical data on weather and weather predictions in the northeastern United States, but also provides a Virtual Reality Weather Page and a U.S. weather statistics page with data compiled for the previous 10 days in the United States. The Virtual Reality Weather page lets you view the cloud cover from any location on earth by rotating the earth on the screen, as well as providing QuickTime movies of a hurricane, sea-surface temperatures, and a topographical earth. You need to plug-in software to use these features and you will have to allow several minutes for loading.
- The Explorer’s Natural Science Outline. Developed by the Great Lakes Collaborative and University of Kansas Unite Group this service provides a comprehensive outline of science topics, each with links to K-12 instructional materials. Under the heading Weather, links to K-12 materials concerning general weather, seasons, storms, clouds, and climate are provided. Most require downloading PDF or HQX files.
- The Weather Unit. Provides links to weather-related lessons and activities in Science, Social Studies, Math, Geography, Art, Reading and Writing, Drama, Music, Physical Education, with suggested Field Trips, Classroom Props, and Resources. A special section also lets students review books and submit their reviews to the web site.
- KidSat, NASA. This site is planned and operated by students and contains pictures and information about the weather and atmosphere as viewed from space. Under the subheading Education and Curriculum is Unit 1, which is about weather, and contains lessons, goals, and objectives. There is also information about how pictures are taken from space, mission information, a photo gallery, and teacher training.
- Exploring the Environment, NASA. A NASA Classroom of the Future. This site is an on-line Earth-system science course for middle and high school teachers. Under the subheading Modules and Activities are three weather-related exercises; Atmosphere, Severe Weather-Hurricanes, and Weather or Not? These modules involve students collecting and plotting data concerning the weather and then making predictions based on the data.
- Explore the GLOBE—Atmosphere lnvestigation, NASA. The GLOBE site is an interactive site that lets teachers and students from 4000 schools in 55 countries works with research scientists exploring our planet. The Atmosphere investigation contains background material, suggestions for hands-on field-based investigations and data collections. Protocols include identifying types of clouds, amount of cloud cover, temperature, and pH of precipitation. This site is aimed at classrooms that want to collect and exchange data, so is probably more suited to 8-12 grade classrooms. Several other science investigations are offered.
- Earth System Science, Universities Space Systems Association. This site is maintained by a cooperative University Program and NASA. It's goal is to provide information and foster collaboration concerning studies of Earth's global systems. Under the subheading data sources, is a weather category with links to satellite images of the weather which are great tools for on-line classrooms. The link to the Naval Research Lab at Monterey, is particularly useful, with information on cloud classification, images, and movies of clouds, tropical storms, and other weather phenomena. Also, under the subheading videos, see on-line videos of clouds and hurricanes from space.
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Home Page. This site provides information about the NOAA, weather, climate, El Nino, environmental information, weather careers, and much more. Click on Weather to see pages devoted to Local Weather, National Items, National Storm Warnings, World Weather, Satellite, Radar and Hot Links, and Weather Videos. The Satellite section lets you see satellite images of the earth and weather. The videos section has on-line videos of tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning, thunderstorms, floods, and other severe weather.
- HGTV’s Tornado Project-On-line. Contains numerous photographs and much information about tornadoes, including where they occur, recent tornadoes, what to do in case of a tornado, fact sheets, myths, stories, and links to other sites. This company also sells videos and booklets, but you don’t have to buy anything to view the site.
- National Weather Service. Provides natural hazards statistics, an annual natural disaster map, publications and hazards awareness material, and educational resources links.
