Unit 06 · Air, Atmosphere & Climate Change
The atmosphere is thin, layered, and doing a lot of work. This unit covers how the atmosphere is structured, how greenhouse gases trap heat, and how the carbon budget — tracked in the rising Keeling curve — separates climate from weather. You’ll distinguish stratospheric ozone depletion from ground-level smog, follow acid deposition (acid rain) from smokestack to lake, and name the criteria air pollutants that make city air dangerous. Mastery means you can read atmospheric data and tell the difference between a natural swing and a human-driven trend.
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atmospheric structure | Treats the atmosphere as one uniform blanket. | Names the layers but cannot say what distinguishes them. | Describes the troposphere, stratosphere, and their temperature and ozone profiles, and why the layering matters. |
| The greenhouse effect & greenhouse gases | Confuses the greenhouse effect with the ozone hole. | Names greenhouse gases but not how they trap heat. | Explains how greenhouse gases absorb and re-emit infrared, and ranks CO₂, methane, and water vapor by their role. |
| Carbon budget & the Keeling curve | Sees no trend in atmospheric CO₂. | Reads the Keeling curve’s rise but not its seasonal saw-tooth. | Reads the Keeling curve — both the annual rise and the seasonal cycle — and ties it to the carbon budget and human emissions. |
| Ozone, acid rain & air pollutants | Lumps every air problem together. | Names ozone depletion, acid rain, or smog but confuses their causes. | Separates stratospheric ozone loss, acid deposition, and criteria-pollutant smog by cause, and explains the mechanism of each. |
| Field technique (air-quality data analysis) | Cannot read an air-quality or CO₂ dataset. | Plots the data but cannot separate signal from noise. | Analyzes air-quality or greenhouse-gas data and distinguishes a human-driven trend from natural variation. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit to its anchor across History · Reading · Writing (plus chosen electives) and defends why the connection matters. |
“The Keeling curve climbs every year, but it also wiggles up and down with the seasons — plants pull CO₂ down each Northern summer and release it in winter. Climate is that long rising trend; a cold week is just weather riding on top of it. Acid rain is a separate problem — sulfur and nitrogen oxides from combustion, not the greenhouse effect.”
“The air is getting warmer because of the ozone hole. CO₂ went up on the graph. Acid rain and global warming are basically the same thing.”
You demonstrate this unit by analyzing real air-quality and greenhouse-gas data — including the Keeling curve — and arguing a human-driven trend apart from natural variation aloud, not on a multiple-choice test. A criterion counts as mastered only when your reading of the data supports the distinction you draw. Mastery is demonstrated, not awarded.
A 5-page clipboard packet — unit overview, key terms, the mastery rubric, anchor examples, and a score sheet you can print and grade against.