Science Partnership for Global Change Education
In-class activities
Rising Seas
These hands-on student activities help students explore that sea level indeed is rising, understand the two major causes of sea level rise (melting glaciers/ice sheets and thermal expansion), and discover which parts of the world are being impacted by rising seas.
They can be done in any order but we have designed them in the order that they are listed with students first exploring sea level data, then comparing which types of ice contribute to sea level rise, seeing thermal expansion in action, then finally looking at where sea level is impacting people.
1. In this activity, students will graph and interpret sea level data from Crissy Field in San Francisco.
2. In this simple hands-on activity students explore which type of melting ice contributes to sea level rise. This models show sea ice, which is frozen sea water, which is already placed in the ocean and taking up space does not contribute to sea level rise, but any land based ice such as glaciers and/or ice sheets does contribute to increasing the volume of water in the ocean. The content slides contain pictures and a full explanation of the three main types of ice, which make up Earth’s cryosphere.
3. This activity explores why a warmer ocean causes global sea level to rise. It models thermal expansion in the ocean by showing that a warmer liquid will expand increasing its volume. This can be qualitatively shown using a simple bottle, straw, and heating set up.
4. This web-based interactive activity lets students discover what parts of the world are most impacted by sea level rise. The NOAA based sea level rise viewer is a powerful tool for seeing how much sea level will rise given different scenarios and where in the world the greatest impact will be.