Watching the Land Temperature Bell Curve Heat Up (1950-2020)

• This brief video is an animation of land temperature anomaly distributions through time from 1950 to 2020.
• Students will see that in the seventy-year period, hotter days have increased and colder days have decreased in regularity.

Positives

• The data clearly displays an increase in warmer than normal temperatures on land over time.
• There is a link in the description to download the video and learn more about the methodology.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should know how to read a bell curve.
• Students should know the terms normal distribution and anomaly.
  

Differentiation

• Students can compare the data to this video on global warming data and this video on Greenland ice loss data.
• A lesson related to this topic is Is Your City Getting Warmer?: Data Analysis in Google Sheets.
• This other lesson can help students understand the differences between weather and climate.
• Students can also do this activity where they analyze air temperature graphs.