Global Climate Dashboard: Climate Variability

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA

This interactive displays how climate variables are changing over time (temperature, CO2, Arctic sea ice, sun's energy, sea level, etc.) in graphical form. Students can easily examine over 50+ years of archived data.

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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.

The dashboard is on the bottom half of this page - scroll down to it. Point out that students can click the parameters listed below into one of the 3 viewing slots above. Up/down arrows show which parameters are in the viewing slots.
This site tracks real-time data from around the climate system. Nine different parameters are presented to give a snapshot of both the variability and the trends over time. Graphs are presented in a manner that allows students to compare and contrast different climate variables such as El Niño, temperature, CO2, solar energy levels, on the same time scales. Comments from expert scientist: The resource contains graphs of teleconnection indices that can be easily moved to view index changes in time (1950 to present). This is a really great concept and could be very useful in classroom settings to show students the variability of climate oscillations. The resource is also appropriately labeled as climate variability so that anyone who knows the difference between climate variability and climate change could easily find the indices if that is what they are looking for.
Resource offers educators a creative way to compare climate variables and outcomes and read more about the changes scientists are observing. The 'learn more' links describe how the data is collected and what it means. The graphs on the 'learn more' pages are also interactive. The 'learn more' pages do not always have up-to-date explanations for the data. They are best used for background information.