Climate Engineering – Module Overview

Overview

Objectives

By participating fully in this module, students will:

• Work collaboratively to design climate solutions
• Develop presentations on design solutions
• Model marine cloud brightening in a classroom setting
• Model some of the geopolitical challenges of addressing climate change

Grade Level

Grades 6-12, Undergraduate

Standards

• Varies by lesson

This module also supports these international frameworks:

• Global competence (Asia Society and OECD): Investigate the world; Recognize perspectives; Communicate ideas; Take action
• UNESCO learning objectives for SDG 13 (Climate Action):
  • Cognitive 2: current climate change as caused by human greenhouse gas emissions
  • Cognitive 3: which human activities contribute most to climate change
  • Cognitive 5: prevention, mitigation and adaptation strategies
  • Socio-emotional 2: encouraging others to protect the climate
  • Socio-emotional 3: collaborating on agreed strategies to deal with climate change
  • Behavioural 3: assessing the impact of decisions on other people and world regions
  • Behavioural 4: promoting climate-protecting public policies

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

• Varies by lesson

Materials Required

• Varies by lesson

Learning Sequence

Lesson Plan Introduction

Lesson 1: Collaborative Design Thinking

In this lesson students learn about evidence for climate change and propose solutions to address climate change. They will design solutions as part of collaborative groups and present their solutions to the class.

Lesson 2: Cloud in a Bottle

In this lesson students will model cloud formation in a bottle, measure the reflectivity of clouds in a bottle, and make inferences about the role of aerosol concentrations on cloud brightness.

Lesson 3: Climate Engineering Designs

In this lesson students will develop and iterate their designs from the first lesson using design thinking processes.

Lesson 4: Model U.N.

In this lesson students will explore the geo-, socio-, economic, and political aspects of climate change and geoengineering. Students will participate in a model United Nations activity in which student groups (countries) have both public and private agendas related to climate change.

Lesson 5: Culminating Event

In this lesson, students will present their climate engineering designs as a PowerPoint presentation or a poster presentation. Their presentations should include both the strengths of their designs as well as the risks and limitations. Students give their presentations to audience members that include the class as well as outside stakeholders like scientists, engineers, and/or policy makers.

Global Connections

Needs review: Claude drafted the Global Connections section, and the global competence and UNESCO SDG 13 entries under Standards, from the lesson materials. Review and edit them.

Start where you teach

Across the five lessons, students can start from climate evidence where they live (lesson 1), design for a local problem (lesson 3), and present to decision makers in their own community (lesson 5).

Bring in other perspectives

In the Model U.N. (lesson 4), students represent nations with very different interests. Each lesson's Global Connections section suggests more ways to bring in voices from elsewhere.

Share beyond the classroom

A class in another country can follow the same module, giving feedback on the designs and joining the Model U.N. summit and Culminating Event by video.

Lessons in this module

Teach the lessons in this order. Each lesson's page has its plans and materials to download.

1. Collaborative Design
2. Cloud in a Bottle Experiment
3. Climate Engineering Design
4. Model U.N.
5. Culminating Event

Other ways to teach this module

College course with a lab (1 credit)

Needs review: Claude drafted this college version from a university instructor's suggestion that the module could run as a one-credit course with a lab. Ask the IU team, and any instructor who tests it, to review the schedule, lab and assessment.

The five lessons can also be taught as a one-credit elective for first- and second-year undergraduates, with the Cloud in a Bottle experiment as a two-session lab and the Model U.N. as the centerpiece. This plan assumes about 16 contact hours, for example eight two-hour sessions, and no prerequisites beyond introductory science. All materials download from the lesson pages.

Schedule

• Session 1. Climate change and the design challenge. Teach Collaborative Design, starting from climate evidence where students live. Assign the headline statements of the IPCC AR6 Working Group I Summary for Policymakers as reading.
• Session 2. Clouds, aerosols and marine cloud brightening. Use the slides and discussion questions from Introduction to Marine Cloud Brightening, including the ship-track evidence and the Twomey and Albrecht effects.
• Session 3. Lab 1: Cloud in a Bottle. Run Cloud in a Bottle as a group lab: every group runs at least four trials each of the low- and high-aerosol conditions and records the lux readings with and without the cloud.
• Session 4. Lab 2: analysis and extension. Groups pool their data in the lesson's spreadsheet, compute the mean and standard deviation of the change in lux for each condition, and test the difference with a t-test. Then each group designs and runs one extension (see Lab expectations).
• Session 5. Design studio. Teach Climate Engineering Design. Add the physical science checkpoints of Diamond et al. (2022) as criteria in the decision matrix.
• Session 6. Governance. Teach Research or Not? Classifying Solar Radiation Modification Experiments to prepare students to argue about who should decide.
• Session 7. Model U.N. Run Model U.N. with a full negotiation round. Each delegation submits a one-page position paper beforehand.
• Session 8. Final presentations. Run Culminating Event, ideally with guests from outside the class, followed by a written reflection.

Lab expectations

• Each group keeps a lab notebook: the setup (distances, pumps, sprays), every reading, and anything that went wrong. The lesson notes that the experiment can be tricky, so failed trials are data too.
• The lab report states a hypothesis, reports means and standard deviations with a test of significance, and discusses what a cloud in a bottle can and can't tell us about clouds over the ocean (scale, hairspray instead of sea salt, and the cloud adjustments from session 2).
• Extensions are open problems: a third aerosol amount, salt water as the source of cloud nuclei, or live data logging. The IU team has tried the last two without yet finding a reliable method, so a working approach would be a real contribution.

Assessment

• Lab report: 30%
• Final design presentation: 25%
• Model U.N. position paper: 20%
• Participation in the Model U.N.: 15%
• Written reflection: 10%

Credit and contact