Greenhouse Effect

The Greenhouse Effect Teaching Box

Greenhouse Effect Teaching Box This teaching box provides resources related to the greenhouse effect. It will help you teach how the greenhouse effect works, and how it prevents Earth from becoming a frozen ball of ice, and why there is too much of it happening today.

Teaching Boxes are themed collections of classroom-ready educational resources to build student understanding of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Resources highlighted within teaching boxes are from various science education programs and all have been vetted by the education team at the UCAR Center for Science Education.

  • Topic: The Greenhouse Effect
  • Level: Middle and high school
This is an illustration showing how the greenhouse effect works: energy from the Sun is shown entering the Earth's atmosphere, and then radiating from the surface as heat. Some of the heat energy escapes, but due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere much of that heat is trapped which causes warming.

Introduction to the Greenhouse Effect

Students will learn how greenhouse gases temporarily trap heat within Earth's atmosphere, warming our planet via the greenhouse effect.