NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

When you think of springtime on land, you might think of birds migrating, flowers blooming, and leaves emerging. While these changes are happening on land, changes are happening in the ocean, too! But how can you tell if spring has sprung in the sea? This graphic explains some of the seasonal effects that take place as ocean waters warm and days grow longer.

Celebrate the season of spring with NOAA! From new graphics to educational resources, spring into science with us and check out our content.

Accurate education about climate and energy topics has never been more important, and it can be challenging to locate reliable, vetted educational materials to use in your classroom. CLEAN is here to help you find the resources that you need, without wondering about their scientific credibility or educational value. Search for resources by NGSS Performance Expectations (PE) and Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI), grade level, keyword or resource type, or use CLEAN to design your own unit.

Students learn about Earth systems through science-based fictional story books and accompanying lesson plans. The seven books in this series cover air quality, climate, clouds, Earth system, seasons, soil, and water.

As we head further into the Northern Hemisphere’s spring, many people across the country are ready to put winter — and its cold and snow — behind them. But, even the spring months can have their cold spells. So, when can we expect the cold to really be on its way out? The “Day of the Last Spring Freeze” map, which is based on climatology, can help answer that question for your area.

Few real-world signs of climate change are easier to read than changes in the growing season of familiar vegetation. From lilacs — which are flowering earlier — to allergy-causing ragweed, which is producing pollen longer into the fall, vegetation is reacting to Earth’s rising surface temperature.

NCEI is a major NOAA data repository that hosts and provides public access to one of the most significant archives for environmental data on Earth. Over 25 petabytes (25 million gigabytes) of atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data are available, including interactive maps, numerical data, satellite imagery, graphs and figures, modeled and predicted data, and more.

Deep into the foggy abyss of the central Bering Sea, the Pribilof Islands were found, not by sight, but by sound. In the 1800s, fur traders tracked the northern fur seal to these islands. They discovered that the seals are only there in the summer and fall. Today, researchers from NOAA's National Marine Mammal Lab track the migrating fur seals to understand where they feed in winter months and what marine resources they depend on for survival.

Although 75% of the planet is a relatively unchanging ocean of blue, the remaining 25% of Earth's surface is a dynamic green. Data from the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP satellite is able to show these subtle differences in greenness using the Visible-Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the satellite. This dataset highlights our ever-changing planet, using a highly detailed vegetation index data from the satellite, developed by scientists at NOAA.