Climate Action! How can we mitigate human impacts on the atmosphere?
Climate Action! How can we mitigate human impacts on the atmosphere?
Climate Action! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students.
Climate Action! is the new community research guide from the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project for students aged 11 to 18. In the guide, young people explore the question “How can we mitigate human impact on the atmosphere?” The guide contains themes that lead youth to discover their interconnectedness with the atmosphere and understand complex climate systems. Together, these themes help prepare youth to take action towards a sustainable future for the planet.
Visit the StoryMap for additional resources.
VISIT THE climate Action! STORYMAP
Help us measure impact! By providing us with this basic information, you are ensuring that we can document the reach of the Climate Action module and helping the Smithsonian Science Education Center to understand how to best support educators and parents as they undertake this module with their learners.
Climate Action! will be available in Spanish summer 2024!
Click below to download the PDF files for each part of the community research guide. Follow the instructions in the research guide for each task.
DOWNLOAD Climate action! GETTING STARTED
Download climate action! Part 1
Task 1: What elements do humans add to systems they are in together? In this task young people discover their identities, understand what is a system and how human senses add to a system, and investigate a shared future system.
Task 2: How do humans develop relationships in a system when they’re working together? In this task young people will create a futures mood board, play a game to understand change in systems, and develop a list of community system elements to help with researching the relationships between humans and the atmosphere.
Download Climate Action! Part 2
Task 1: How do humans build relationships with weather and climate? In this task young people will lear the difference between weather and climate, analyze climate data of oceanographers, meteorologists, glaciologists, botanists, firefighters, and economists, and assess how climate affects them personally.
Task 2: What relationships does my community have with climate? In this task young people will survey their community, analyze how people receive and express information, and evaluate sources of information.
DOWNLOAD climate action! PART 3
Task 1: How do humans understand energy elements in the atmosphere? In this task young people will investigate how changes in gases in the atmosphere can affect energy in a system, model Earth's energy system, and develop ways to communicate about elements and relationships in Earth’s energy.
Task 2: How do changes in the atmosphere affect Earth’s energy in the system? In this task young people will investigate natural and human additions of greenhouse gasses, analyze atmosphere concentration, model greenhouse additions and removals in a game, and map their research area.
Download climate Action! Part 4
Task 1: How has humanity changed its lifestyles over time? In this task young people will explore how human life has changed over the past thousand years, analyze greenhouse gass additions in thier community, and imagine the future of greenhouse gasses in their community.
Task 2: How do human lifestyles connect to greenhouse gas additions? In this task young people will use calculate greenhouse gasses added in thier lifestyle, understand their choice influence profile, and imagine the future.
Download climate action! Part 5
Task 1: What individual action strategies will we use? In this task young people will investigate mitigation strategies for climate change, understand what motivates people to act on climate change, and find a mitigation strategy that is right for them.
Task 2: How can we measure mitigation progress? In this task young people will measure action on their mitigation strategy, create a research organizer, and commit to the individual action they will take to implement their strategy.
Download climate Action! Part 6
Task 1: How can we collaborate locally to collectively take action for climate mitigation? In this task young people will model individual and group action on climate change, play a game on collective action, learn the difference between small, step-by-step improvements and larger, more significant shifts in climate change mitigation, and identify and learn about groups who are already taking climate change action.
Task 2: How are people globally taking collective climate action? In this task young people will explore the need for global collboration on climate change mitigation and explore global collaborative mitigation examples.
Download climate action! Part 7
Task 1: How can we prepare to take individual or collaborative actions in the system? In this task young people will relationships between mitigation strategies in the system and analyze the system to find places where they can make a change.
Task 2: How will I contribute to actions in the atmospheric system? In this task young people will act on their ideas and work toward a sustainable future.
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