Science 5 - Earth Systems Websites

The Earth Null School simulator website is a powerful tool for visualizing real-time and historical weather and environmental data. It allows users to explore global wind patterns, ocean currents, and temperatures at various altitudes and depths. The simulator can also display air quality metrics, such as CO₂ and particulate matter levels, as well as ozone concentrations. Users can view data overlays like precipitation, cloud cover, and wave heights, offering insights into weather systems and oceanic phenomena. The site supports time manipulation, enabling exploration of past and predicted conditions. With all of the historic data that can be used in this simulator, you can pull up an extreme weather event (eg. hurricane or wind storm) that you have the dates to, and you can watch it evolve.

URL: https://earth.nullschool.net/

Though it might be argued that this site is slightly better suited for the outcomes in Science 6 (where there is a greater focus on climate change), this site still has much relevance in Science 5 when looking to understand how climate works. The site covers topics like energy, water, weather, plants, and the impact of human activities on the planet, all presented with kid-friendly language and colorful visuals. It features games, activities, quizzes, and videos that make complex scientific concepts accessible and fun for young learners. 

URL: https://climatekids.nasa.gov/

At the first of these two sites your students are given a review of Koppen's five broad categories of climate. At the second URL, your students are able to go into MapMaker and begin to add/remove layers and really see some details about each type of climate (and subclimates) while also being able to see the range of climates we have within geopolitical boundaries such as Alberta and Canada. It should be noted that if you would like your students to save their work in MapMaker, that they should log in to ArcGIS (under the RDPSD Google waffle) and then open the MapMaker from there. (Contact me if you have any questions about doing this.) 

URL (Site): https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/koppen-climate-classification-system/

URL (MapMaker): https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/atlas/index.html?appid=0cd1cdee853c413a84bfe4b9a6931f0d&webmap=9966020554ae4b468c5ca9b62739e2a2 

To the left, you can see a number of the tools that can be taken from this site. The map that shows all the weather stations (and the fact that we don't have an actual station situated in Red Deer) or some of the tools such as the wind rose generator (the one in the bottom right is the wind rose for Red Deer over the course of the 2023 year; if you would have asked me, I wouldn't have predicted that we get winds from the south most often) are some of the tools that you can find on the main page of this site. With wind as part of the curriculum for this unit this can be a useful tool to help students understand that there are differences between the amount of time that we get wind from a certain direction, and the typical speed of the wind when it comes from that direction. As can be seen in Red Deer's wind rose, winds may come from the south most often, but it is winds from the NW and the SE that tend to arrive with the greatest speed.

Main ACIS Page: https://agriculture.alberta.ca/acis/ 

Weather Station Data: https://agriculture.alberta.ca/acis/weather-data-viewer.jsp 

Wind Rose Generator: https://www.acis.alberta.ca/acis/wind-rose.jsp 

Historical Weather Data: https://agriculture.alberta.ca/acis/township-data-viewer.jsp 

Climate Maps: https://www.acis.alberta.ca/acis/climate-maps.jsp 

What is great about using this main map of Environment Canada's is that you can then click on any city to see a collection of data for each town that appears on the map. In addition, all of the red and yellow areas on the map will give an explanation as to why they have such colours, but the best part of this site is the incredibly detailed table that can be created underneath it where you can see all of the warnings in various areas. This table also provides a link to all of the various weather stations from which Environment Canada collects data.

What is even better, to really get some use of tables in class, is when choosing to look at any city, scroll past the averages and extremes (which, though interesting, can be found on most weather sites), and choose to look at the "Historical Weather." This will give you a wide collection of weather data for this month thus far (by default), but you can change it to any month dating back to 1940. You are also able to download such data as CSV or XML files if you would like to do some graphing with your classes in Google Sheets.

URL (Alberta Weather Locations): https://weather.gc.ca/forecast/canada/index_e.html?id=AB 

URL (Historic Data Tables): https://climate.weather.gc.ca/climate_data/daily_data_e.html?StationID=55018 

While the site above certainly has lots of information in the form of tables, the ease of understanding some of the data, and access to climographs (which are found in this unit) certainly give this site some benefits. The true drawback to this site (when comparing it to Environment Canada) is that it certainly has some advertising. Now puch that aside, here is where you can get some different presentations of weather data than on Environment Canada. Though all of the examples below are for the city of Red Deer, this site certainly has these same presentations of data for all of its sites.

URL (14-Day Trend): https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/city/ca/alberta/red-deer/14-days?from7day=1 

URL (Historical Average Climograph): https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/historical/alberta/red-deer