What Controls Temperature?

Required new protocols supported by existing investigations

• Soil Temperature (SOIL)
• Air Humidity (ATMO)

Minimum four-stage Activity

Purpose: Temperature is controlled by heating of the Earth's air, soil and water by the sun and by the complex redistribution of this energy by the atmosphere and land surface. An important basic concept here is the ability or capacity of soil, water and air to hold and transport heat. These properties will be explored below.

Discovery	Experiment	Modeling	Comparison
Temperature treasure hunt	Heat capacity of soil, water, air	Subsurface Temp. model Degree days	Urban heat islands/ Coastal effects

Other activites we may want to consider

Introductory Discovery Activity

• WEB: A virtual Treasure Hunt

Intermediate: What Affects Temperature?

• WEB slide tour: Intro. to components of energy balance; Global distribution of energy
• Capturing the Sun's rays: Solar oven
• A Closed system: Bottle terrarium
• Interactions with Vegetation, Soils, Wind, Soil Moisture, Open water
• Heat of condensation and freezing
• Scale effects ??

Advanced: Energy Balance Modeling

• Build a solar calorimeter
• Estimating your energy fluxes
• Putting it together: Modeling your Energy Balance

Issues: Analysis of integrated data sets

• Differences between Deserts and Forests
• Insulating properties of ground cover

System Considerations

• Require ability to select/deselect grid lines on visualizations
• Mechainism to query reference data set values for a point, line or area.

Back to UA/GLOBE Soil Moisture home page

Back to GLOBE home page