NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

This resource collection from NOAA Education dives into what food webs are. Food webs describe who eats whom in an ecological community. Made of interconnected food chains, food webs help us understand how changes to ecosystems — say, removing a top predator or adding nutrients — affect many different species, both directly and indirectly.

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores how NOAA collects climate data from the atmosphere, land, ocean, and space. Some say that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. More formally, climate is the long-term average of temperature, precipitation, and other weather variables at a given location. Every 30 years, climate scientists calculate new averages. The normal high and low temperatures reported on your local weather forecast come from these 30-year averages. Although climate describes conditions in the atmosphere (hot/cold, wet/dry), these conditions are influenced by the ocean, land, sun, and atmospheric chemistry. NOAA monitors these factors to understand and predict changes to local or global climate.

Did you know that there are storms always occurring in space? Not rain or snow, but winds and magnetic waves that move through space! This is known as space weather. This resource collection from NOAA explains what space weather is, how we forecast it, and how it impacts Earth.

This resource collection from NOAA Education dives into why climate change is happening and how it is impacting different parts of the Earth and society, including food, water, and health. Though we often think about human-induced climate change as something that will happen in the future, it is an ongoing process. Ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world are being impacted today. 

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores why and how our weather changes throughout the year. In many parts of the United States, you might change your wardrobe with the seasons, grabbing a heavy coat in winter, while wearing only a light t-shirt in summer. Although ecosystems, plants, and animals cannot adjust their attire quite so easily, they have evolved to make changes that help them survive seasonal conditions caused by the rotation of the Earth around the sun.

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores carbon storage and exchange and how humans are impacting the cycle. Carbon is the chemical backbone of life on Earth. Carbon compounds regulate the Earth’s temperature, make up the food that sustains us, and provide energy that fuels our global economy.

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores the major systems that drive global weather. Imagine our weather if Earth were completely motionless, had a flat dry landscape and an untilted axis. This of course is not the case; if it were, the weather would be very different. The local weather that impacts our daily lives results from large global patterns in the atmosphere caused by the interactions of solar radiation, Earth's large ocean, diverse landscapes, and motion in space.

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores different ways that we observe and forecast the weather. Observing the daily weather is part of a regular routine for many of us, helping us decide what to wear and which activities we will do each day. Similar observations of atmospheric conditions are also required by meteorologists to develop those weather forecasts with which we are all familiar.

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores how tornadoes form and impact our lives. A tornado warning has been issued and you are in the path of one of the 1,200+ tornadoes that hit the United States each year. How quickly can you get to a safe place out of the severe weather? Do you have a plan? Where would you go? Will you, your family, your students be safe?

This resource collection from NOAA Education explores the science behind hurricanes as well as safety recommendations. Hurricanes are one of nature’s most powerful storms. They produce strong winds, storm surge flooding, and heavy rainfall that can lead to inland flooding, tornadoes, and rip currents.