Probable Futures Map

Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

• Teaching Tips
  Vignettes from all over the world provide students with a window into how other people are affected by climate change. They provide a wide range of stories from vulnerable groups facing the effects of climate change and can be used to discuss environmental justice, empathy, and climate impacts. Teachers might consider asking students to research projected outcomes for different regions and then investigate how those areas might respond to and adapt to climate change in the present and future. This would work well as a tool to view maps of precipitation, dryness, and temperature changes for a range of years. This resource could be used in a variety of ways, but it could be overwhelming for students if they are not given scaffolding and guidance.
• About the Science
  The maps are very easy to use with real data being used and visualized. There are plenty of background materials in the website itself. This is a collection of maps of temperature, precipitation, and dryness. It is not a standalone activity. There is a lot of information one can take from these maps as they also provide vignettes from regions all over the world. This is a great way to show students how climate affects different regions. Vignettes posted around the map provide social implications of current and future climate change projections. The "index" has sections of background information with either stories or descriptions and then maps are available for each topic. Maps use data from regional climate models. Vignettes are not all obviously sourced, as they are identified as crowd sourced. Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
• About the Pedagogy
  This resource supports students ability to analyze data, read maps, and ask questions. There is no teacher guide present; however, if you click on "learn more about the maps" and navigate to "using the maps" there are ideas to guide students and users through the interactive maps. The teacher would need to create an activity that would utilize this as a tool. Teachers should consider creating a sequence of investigations or a worksheet to help guide students through the interactive. Students will need to learn how to navigate an interactive map online, and will engage positively with the maps as they are easy to use. Students should have a basic understanding of scientific models, and climate models in particular, so they understand how interactives such as this can make predictions about future conditions.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  All information on the website can be translated to English, Spanish, French, and Chinese. Requires student access to computers and internet. Little guidance is provided for teachers implementing this tool and teachers should plan to spend time orienting themselves with the interactive maps and scaffolding a student activity around them. The Index section is very useful as there are parts of it that are like FAQs about basics like weather vs climate.