Storylines Available
All Kinds of Weather (and Climate)
Players travel to an island several miles away from Espeth, which has recently been opened for scientific study and exploration. Students meet Juniper, a cartographer who is eager to create various maps of the island, but is puzzled by the island’s two very different climates: desert and rainforest (created by rain shadow).
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Twist and Spout
Players continue to help cartographer Juniper, who wants to set up a weather station somewhere on the island. In the course of trying to find a good location for the weather station, the players see a waterspout, and spend time investigating storm formation.
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What Flows Around Comes Around
While researching marine life around the newly-opened island, Leilani discovers a piece of trash. Worried that this may mean that a floating garbage patch has already accumulated near Espeth, Leilani asks the player for help understanding how currents function, and what impact this has on the planet.
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!
Captain Bait Nenson wants to share his passion for the ocean! Students explore the Pacific ocean biodome and familiarize themselves with its fragile ecosystem, then investigate why corals experienced mass bleaching events on Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries.
View StorylineSandbox: The O.R.B.
Players are given a barren planet that does not yet support life. By adding air masses, changing the planet's rotation and axis tilt, and controlling air mass temperature and humidity levels, players can eventually coax the planet into a life-supporting area with multiple biomes. Eventually, humans will make their home on the planet and will use technology that can be harmful or beneficial to the environment as a whole.
Work to bring your barren wasteland to life
Adjust factors like tilt & rotation, and add air masses.
Students can adjust the tilt (-70 to 70 degrees), rotation (4 hours/day to hundreds of hours in a day), and then add air masses that they customize. The simulation takes effect and begins to bring biomes to life as precipitation occurs over time.
Cause weather events by managing air masses
Choose temperature, precipitation, size, and elevation as you add air masses.
After you add air masses, they begin interacting and moving around the planet! Hot masses rise above cool, they move in a broad Coriolis effect, and cause weather events like rain, blizzards, and tornados.
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Add human settlements to your planet
Once your planet is fixed, you can begin placing human settlements!
Humans require specific conditions to be kept happy, one of which is providing energy. Players build and unlock various types of technology to keep their human settlements growing and happy.
Humans can have negative impacts on the planet
The technology humans use can release greenhouse gases, and cause negative effects.
Human presence and choices in technology result in GHG release, which will then increase global temperature. Increasing global temperature in a climate change model will impact livable areas of the planet, and cause sea levels to rise.
Suggested activities teachers can use
Use our set of suggested activities to help ensure students achieve learning outcomes.
Use our suggested activities alongside the Weather & Climate Sandbox to give some structure to students' learning. Give them challenges like melting their north pole, making a temperature planet, or an extremely hot and cold planet. Have them use a Google Sheets template to track their GHG vs. global temperature over time, too!