Trends in Atmospheric Nitrous Oxide
Data, Graphs, and Maps
Grades6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12Earth and Space Sciences
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Provided by NOAA
What it is
- How has the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere changed over the past 20 years? This site allows you to interact with graphs and datasets to answer this question.
- Students will be able to see graphs depicting global average nitrous oxide amounts in the atmosphere and read text describing the data and how it was gathered.
Teaching tips
Positives
- The graphs are simple and easy to read.
Additional Prerequisites
- Teachers may want to provide some background about nitrous oxide's relationship to climate change.
- Teachers should clarify the units mole fraction and parts per billion if students are unfamiliar.
- If the technical reading is distracting, there are PDFs of the graphs and data that teachers can use instead.
- The data is also downloadable in CSV files.
Differentiation
- The reading is very technical and is probably most appropriate for upper high school students.
- Students can work independently or with a small group to create a list of noticings and wonderings about the data.
- Other related datasets include nitrous oxide emissions, per-capita nitrous oxide emissions, and nitrous oxide emissions by sector.
- If teaching about greenhouse gases in general, check out this video by Hot Mess or this lesson by King's Center for Visualizations in Science.
From the scientist review
Datasets have good quality. There is no contradiction in the resource. This resource is recommended.
How we review resourcesReady to use it?
Hosted on esrl.noaa.gov
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