This interactive map resource displays maps and data of heat-related illnesses, historical and projected extreme heat days, current maximum temperatures, and a monthly forecast of extreme heat.
Students can also explore the text and video below the interactive map to gain more information about how extreme heat affects people in the United States.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource will help students visualize many data sets easily.
The historical data begins in 1979 and the projections go through 2045, so students will get a good idea of how things have changed and where they may be headed.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with U.S. geography.
Students who are color blind will need assistance viewing the data.
Differentiation
Health classes can use this resource for lessons discussing heat stroke or other heat-related illnesses and how to avoid them.
Science classes could use this resource for lessons about biomes, habitats, the effects of extreme heat on plants and animals, the effects of extreme heat and drought on ecosystems, rates of evaporation with changing temperature, where plants and animals may migrate to in the future, protein structure, or denaturing proteins.
Math classes could use this resource to show the many ways to represent data. Consider having students graph the data presented in the map or download a data set to work with from one of the resources linked.
This resource would work well for an independent inquiry, where students choose a location or area to investigate over a specified period of time. After their inquiry, students can use their findings to present to their peers.
Scientist Notes
This map depicts the relationship between temperature and health-related illness in the US. High temperature is one of the causal factors that determines heat-related illness. The map also shows the number of emergency department visits from heat-related illness and is a good tool to implement proactive measures to reduce extreme temperatures and heat-related illness. This resource is recommended for classroom use.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS2: Earth’s Systems
HS-ESS2-4 Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth’s systems result in changes in climate.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
MS-LS1-5 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.
