Module VIII

Explain 

Global Warming has been a hot topic for a while but until I saw some of these testimonies by the people who live in Northern Alaska, you miss out on some of the things they are suffering through.  The idea that they will lose their ways of subsistence and life is hard to fathom.. Even understanding how in the past ten years  2000 feet of coastline was lost in shsimaref is hard to believe.   Finding out that Barrow is one of the most important places to measure arctic change makes me want to visit there.  I had always thought I would get around Alaska a little bit more than I have to this point, but there is still time.   In their statements the people say  winters are shorter, temperatures are rising,  and the climate is changing, and that they can't read the weather anymore through their beings. That feeling of knowing what to expect but you can't rely on it anymore because the land has changed too  fast for them to fully estimate what is going to happen next.

after watching this video

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/echo07.sci.life.coast.climate/

it made me wonder what kind of sea life from the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean will move up to the northern wters to inhabitatin that area.

The interactive map of the arctic sea ice really shows the changes we and the rest of the world have gone through.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/ipy07_int_nasadata/
and to think that is at its third lowest amount of ice since we have been recording data since 1979.

Extend

Thsi website on Antarctic Food Web Game is a good one for kids to do a little interactive puzzle
http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/lsps07_int_oceanfoodweb/

and the sea ice water melting and how much it displaces is a good experiemnt
http://www.andybrain.com/sciencelab/2008/04/26/learn-about-volume-and-space-with-ice-water/

Evaluate

As I read and hear about the warming trends and I go outside today and I am chilled to the bone I feel like nothing is changing.  The wind cuts right through my  North Face Jacket which has a down insert and it is only 16 degrees  but the wind adds another 15 mph gust so the sind chill brings it down to a pretty cold temperature.

Three sites I visited this week include:

Jesse's whose page has some good humor, especially comparing smoking sections in a room with peeing in a pool.

Nick's who had a great picture of a water eddy and correlated that to the skies above  in the air masses  in our atmosphere.

Winsor's blog had me feel better with my timing in getting things done for the blog sinc ehs enoted who had been a slacker and not been caught up yet.