NASA data helps jumpstart climate change course
By Elizabeth Ygartua | August 27, 2009David Kitchen, along with earth scientists from six other American universities, are each creating a teaching module based on their specific specialties by using data NASA has collected on the earth's climate. The modules will be combined next fall into a new climate change course. "It's good science for students to go to original data," Kitchen said, "to work among themselves to understand some of the trickery that can be involved in presenting data for public use, particularly for political use." Kitchen will focus his module on ancient climates, his area of expertise. "If you can use your knowledge to predict what it should be like in the past and find that you're right, in the sense that we know what happened in the past, it gives you more confidence about predicting what's likely to happen in the future," he said. While the other modules' exact topics have yet to be decided, Kitchen said they would likely involve analyzing ice cores, atmospheric circulation, oceanic circulation, temperature change through time and other aspects of climate change. During the course, students will first be introduced to the basic idea, then they will analyze critical questions, and then learn what they need to know to understand how the climate works.
