News you can use from NOAA Planet Stewards
January 14, 2024
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Join Planet Stewards tonight for our first Book Club event of 2025!
At tonight’s book club meeting we’ll talk about Mark Kurlansky's book: World Without Fish: How Kids Can Help Save the Ocean. This book connects all the dots—biology, economics, evolution, politics, climate, history, culture, food, and nutrition—in a way that kids can really understand. It describes how the fish we most commonly eat, including tuna, salmon, cod, and swordfish, could disappear within 50 years, and the domino effect it would have—oceans teeming with jellyfish and turning pinkish orange from algal blooms; seabirds disappearing, then reptiles, then mammals. It describes the back-and-forth dynamic of fishermen and scientists. It covers the effects of industrialized fishing, and how bottom-dragging nets are turning the ocean floor into a desert.
Meeting Date & Time: TONIGHT!
Tuesday, January 14, 2025 | 7 p.m. ET
Here are a few things to know about the book and tonight’s meeting:
You don't have to have read the book to join in the discussion - though it does help ;>D
Listen to an audio “short” of chapter one.
A complete description of the book, meeting discussion questions, a note from NOAA Fisheries with resource links, and login information are posted on the National Ocean Service's Planet Steward's website.
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See previously selected books and discussion questions in our Book Club Archive.
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Now is a great time to start thinking about engaging your students and your school community to implement a stewardship project in the spring.
Dale Glass (now retired), as Science Coordinator of the National Presbyterian School, in Washington, DC, added a science service learning project to a standard inquiry-based environmental science curriculum and helped fifth grade students learn climate science as they made connections between a real-world problem and their classroom learning. Students brainstormed, researched, and developed a project to address idling in the carpool lane at their school. They collected and analyzed data, and used it to build a compelling anti-idling campaign for the school community.
Read about Dale’s stewardship project.
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in future issues of The Watch?
 Join intrepid student explorer Teek from planet Queloz and NOAA scientist Tom Di Liberto as they explore how the ocean influences weather and climate on Earth, and the technologies scientists use to gather information about our planet.
This dynamic five-part animated series is accessible and entertaining for kids and science enthusiasts of all ages. Each episode is supplemented by two educator-ready standards-aligned lessons for students in the fourth through sixth grades. The lessons support the videos in telling a cohesive story about key Earth systems and how those systems impact each other. Through the exploration of NOAA data, visualizations, and other content, students will learn how the ocean-weather-climate connection makes the planet tick.
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 From the beginning of 2024 to now, NOAA has made incredible progress on behalf of communities across the country. This accomplishments report and video include a snapshot of NOAA’s top milestones throughout not only 2024, but the past four years. These materials encapsulate an unprecedented four years of groundbreaking achievements and meaningful progress through a clear and compelling narrative of how our efforts have shaped a more sustainable and resilient future for all Americans.
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Issued annually since 2006, the Arctic Report Card is a timely and peer-reviewed source for environmental information on the current state of the Arctic. A key finding in this year’s report card was that after storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution.
The transition of the Arctic from a carbon sink to a carbon source is one of the dramatic changes in the Arctic that are documented in NOAA’s 2024 Arctic Report Card. Climatic shifts are forcing plants, wildlife and the people that depend on them to rapidly adapt to a warmer, wetter and less certain world.
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This month marks 25 years since Argo floats began drifting with currents and diving for data. Argo is an international program that collects environmental intelligence from inside the ocean. The array has helped scientists to better understand how our ocean is changing, its interactions with the atmosphere, and helped us improve climate and weather forecasts. To date, Argo buoys have provided more than two million unique observations and counting.
Explore 25 years of the Argo ocean observation program
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How do we predict our planet’s most powerful forces? Listen to the Dr. Spinrad Startalk podcast episode, where Neil Degrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice discuss space weather, climate refugees, the ARGO robot fleet, and so much more with NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad.
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January 16, 2025 I 6-7 pm ET
Eternal Evening in the Ocean: Where Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems Thrive
January 28, 2025 I 1-2 pm ET
Modeling Impacts of Climate Change and Extreme Events
Two Decades of the NOAA Arctic Report Card Webinar.
January 15, 2025 | 2-3 p.m.
 The Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program's Arctic Research Program is hosting a webinar about the Arctic Report Card (ARC) entitled “Two decades of the NOAA Arctic Report Card: history, reflections, and next steps.” This webinar will include an introduction to the ARC, a panel of experts who will reflect on how Arctic science and ecosystems have evolved over the past 20 years, and discuss how to engage in the ARC process, including outreach and K-16 education opportunities and efforts. We hope you will consider joining and sharing your perspective on educational accompaniments to this annual Report Card.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 | 6 p.m. ET
Participants will explore student lessons, activities and programs that answer the anchor phenomenon: What energy actions can I take at school, at home, and in my community to create a more sustainable future? Learn how students can investigate energy and energy conservation through energy auditing that can result in a measurable reduction in your building’s carbon footprint. Find out how your school can participate in a national school building energy conservation program. Participants will have access to free Google lessons that align with NGSS standards, follow a 5E format and include career and climate connections.
Register for the Teach Climate Network Webinar!
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Application Deadline: January 20, 2025
The National Air and Space Museum's Teacher Innovator Institute will welcome up to 30 teachers from across the United States to Washington, DC during two sessions: July 7-18, 2025 and July 13-24, 2026. The same 30 teachers will remain with the program for two summers, returning to Washington, DC in year two to reconnect, develop their practice, and mentor the newest class of Teacher Innovators. There is no cost for teachers to participate, lodging, food, and travel are paid for by the Museum.
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Wednesday, January 22, 2025 | 4 - 4:30 p.m. ET
 Climate LIVE K12 features live lectures and interactive activities with Columbia University scientists and experts for K-12 students, educators, families, and the public! And they’re all FREE!
This upcoming webinar is ideal for high school students and educators, undergraduates, graduate students, and the public. Columbia Climate School graduate students will share their varied experiences as a negotiator, journalist, and advocate at COP, and discuss challenges and successes of the global climate negotiation scene. RSVP for the Climate COP Roundtable today (the event is free but registration is required)! You can also check out previous webinars at the Climate LIVE YouTube archive.
January 23, 2025 | 7 p.m. ET
 Dr. Buz Barstow, is the Associate Professor, Biological and Environmental Engineering Atkinson Center for Sustainability Senior Faculty Fellow, and Carl Sagan Institute Fellow, Cornell University.
Synthetic biology has enormous potential for building sustainability and clean energy technologies. However, we’re unable to take advantage of much of this potential because our knowledge of many of the most interesting things that nature has to offer remain limited. This talk reviews recent breakthroughs that Dr. Barstow’s lab has made in biomining rare earth elements for sustainable energy technologies, microbial electroactivity and upgrading photosynthesis, and new mechanisms for genetic engineering. Then, he will discuss what they intend to do next, including building a Microbe-Mineral Atlas to discover new mechanisms that will allow highly efficient mining of metals; development of hyper-engineerable microbes; and how to use them to build high-performance autotrophic microbes. Register for Science in the Virtual Pub Webinar now!
Friday, January 24, 2025 | 1 - 2:15 p.m. ET
The technologies needed to address and respond to climate change—from clean energy generation to adaptive infrastructure—don't come cheap. These projects rely on funding from large financial institutions that must weigh the risks and returns of their investments. The cost of climate-relevant projects has created opportunities for less conventional financiers, like venture capitalists and philanthropists, to fund and advance the infrastructure projects that communities need to build a more resilient, sustainable future.
This webinar will lay out the current state of financing responses to climate change, discuss adaptation risks, and explore novel mechanisms to leverage financial systems to meet our climate goals.
Register to attend the Securing Financing for Responding to Climate Change webinar
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Start making plans to visit more public lands this year with the National Park's list of Federal fee-free days for 2025, when entrance fees for many Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service lands are waived across the country—including National Public Lands Day on September 27!
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The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is a congressionally-mandated, quadrennial report which brings together hundreds of experts from federal, state and local governments, as well as academic, non-profit and private sectors. The report is a roadmap to a better future through science-based information, data, and real world examples of ways to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and develop resilience strategies.
Over the last year the U.S. Global Change Research Program has hosted a series of webinars dedicated to the Fifth National Climate Assessment. Each webinar presents the focus and highlights of each chapter of the report from chapter authors. | |
