How ice sheets in the geological past can inform us of sea level rise in the future

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Geography, Geology and Environmental Science.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Earth and environmental scientists Dr Ed Gasson, at the University of Exeter, and Professor Carrie Lear, at Cardiff University, in the UK, who are researching how the Antarctic ice sheet changed during the Earth’s past, in order to predict how it will influence future changes to sea levels.
• This resource also contains interviews with Ed, Carrie and their colleague, Amy. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research, and tasks them to think about how the Earth’s climate has changed since the Pliocene.
• The accompanying animation summarises Ed and Carrie’s research, and the script provides space for note-taking.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!