NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

SOS Explorer® (SOSx) is a flat screen version of the widely popular Science On a Sphere® (SOS). The revolutionary software takes SOS datasets, usually only seen on a 6-foot sphere in large museum spaces, and makes them more accessible. The visualizations show information provided by satellites, ground observations and computer models.

Blue Planet provides viewers with an overview of how water shapes our planet and nearly every aspect of our lives. Using data sets from a variety of sources, including NOAA and NASA, the movie presents water as the driver of Earth's dynamic systems, the source of all life on the planet, and it underscores just how rare and precious Earth's fresh water resource is. Blue Planet is a seven minute, narrated movie that was produced for the traveling exhibition WATER: H2O=Life.*

This video, originally created for Science On a Sphere, introduces viewers to oceanic thermohaline circulation — the system of global ocean currents that cycle warm and cold water across the planet.

This Science On a Sphere movie takes viewers on a journey through time and technology, beginning with early storm observations from Caribbean shores and the decks of schooners through the modern age of computer modeling. Along the way, dynamic narration, visualized data, and animation explain how people came to observe and understand the patterns of hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones–collectively known as tropical cyclones. The movie also reveals the inner workings of these storms and deconstructs how computer models work to predict them.

FROZEN features the global cryosphere, those places on Earth where the temperature doesn't generally rise above water's freezing point. As one of the most directly observable climate gauges, the changing cryosphere serves as a proxy for larger themes. The movie brings the Earth alive, projected onto spherical movie screens hanging in the center of darkened theaters. Turning in space, the sphere becomes a portal onto a virtual planet, complete with churning, swirling depictions of huge natural forces moving below.

Phenomenon-based learning is an educational approach that engages students in science. It starts with a “phenomenon,” or an attention-grabbing image or video clip that hooks students into the lesson. In these modules, we use datasets from NOAA’s Science On a Sphere® (SOS) to help explore and explain science phenomena. The modules are also aligned to NGSS.

A pocket-sized version of NOAA’s Science On a Sphere®, the SOS Explorer™ (SOSx) mobile app animates the world right on your smartphone. The NOAA Global Systems Laboratory education team demonstrates how easy it is to use SOSx to do mini-lessons.

This Science On a Sphere data visualization shows global ocean currents.

This x-ray movie of the sun, produced by Dr. Steven Hill of NOAA’s Space Environment Center, is from October 19, 2003 through November 4, 2003. The data for it is from GOES Solar X-Ray Imager, SXI, which is an instrument attached to the GOES 12 satellite. The Space Environment Center receives a stream of the data which it then uses to make space weather alerts and forecast services. The SXI collects one image per minute and varies the exposure settings to allow for three different views to see coronal structures, active regions and solar flares.

This collection of datasets and short videos related to tsunamis includes information on specific tsunami events, earthquakes, and buoys.