The Big Melt

This is a collection of five short videos - The Arctic Ice Cap, Sampling the Ice, Arctic Fisheries, Natives Feel Effect and Arctic Energy -- that can be played separately or in sequence. They show how climate change is affecting fishing, native populations and access for the oil and gas industry in the Arctic. The videos include personal reflections by writers Andrew C. Revkin and Simon Romero, scientists, and residents about their experience of the impacts of the climate change in the Arctic.

Go To:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/the-big-melt/1194811622279/index.html?re...

Andrew C Revkin

Simon Romero

The New York Times

Videos range from 1:52 min to 7:19 min.

Notes From Our Reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials

Teaching Tips

Educators can use these videos to discuss how climate change is currently affecting the Arctic and the possible future impacts on the social and economic life of its residents.

There are three background articles - "No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum", "Old Ways of Life Are Fading as the Arctic Thaws" and "As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound"- at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/series/thebigmelt/index.html

These articles along with the accompanying five videos provide a good opportunity for group work. Groups could be assigned an article and video to analyze and report out to the class.

About the Science

These personal reflections will give some insight into current changes likely due to climate change but they largely do not reflect systematic study.

Comment from expert scientist: Overall, nice review of warming-induced melting of sea ice and melting Greenland ice cap. Does discuss some accurate model projections of sea ice loss.

About the Pedagogy

This resource includes three articles on changes in the Arctic five videos and several graphics.

There are no teaching guides provided with these materials.

Videos are very good for introduction or integration of topics that weave in other topics that are not covered in the lesson. They are not designed as instructional videos.

Technical Details

While the video page is ad-free there is distracting advertising on the home page for this series - http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/series/thebigmelt/index.html

The video resolution is fine for viewing on a computer screen but not enough for projection in a classroom.