{"id":903,"date":"2013-11-20T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/msr_er\/2013\/11\/20\/a-new-tool-for-teaching-climate-change-in-the-cloud\/"},"modified":"2016-08-22T14:51:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T21:51:58","slug":"a-new-tool-for-teaching-climate-change-in-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/a-new-tool-for-teaching-climate-change-in-the-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"A new tool for teaching climate change in the cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Building an historical view of climate change with ChronoZoom\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/Pwtpseb9fOM?feature=oembed&rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Starting in the tenth century, during the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Medieval_Warm_Period\" target=\"_blank\">Medieval Warm Period<\/a>, Greenland was a fraction of a degree warmer than today. Norse settlers raised livestock and cultivated small farms. Later, in the fifteenth century, a colder climate and conflicts with the Inuit caused them to abandon their settlements. Critics of anthropogenic global warming cite this earlier episode of warming as evidence that periods of rising temperatures are part of the natural cycle of climate change. By so doing, they attempt to dismiss the impact of human activities on today\u2019s warming world, but without examining the causes of climate changes at various times in Earth\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0px currentColor;\" title=\"ChronoZoom helps students examine climate changes throughout history\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/0118.ChronoZoom-climate-hero_496x330.jpg\" alt=\"ChronoZoom helps students examine climate changes throughout history\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of my challenges as a teacher at the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ucsb.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a>, is to help my students put such historical evidence in perspective. Every year, I teach a course about Earth system science to 80 to 100 incoming graduate students. It\u2019s very important that these students understand how Earth functions as a planet, including how and why its climate changes. We know that Earth goes through periods in which the climate varies. And at different timescales, we understand why the climate changes.<\/p>\n<p>Covering millions of years\u2019 worth of warming trends in a single term is a challenge; managing the massive volumes of data, charts, videos, illustrations, and other support materials is even more daunting. I\u2019ve struggled to pull together all these materials in an accessible\u2014and manageable\u2014manner.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 5px; border: 0px currentColor; float: left;\" title=\"Scientists have uncovered evidence of climate changes dating back millions of years.\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/1018.ChronoZoom-Climate-mountain270x180.jpg\" alt=\"Scientists have uncovered evidence of climate changes dating back millions of years.\" \/>Thanks to ChronoZoom, an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/chronozoom-named-top-educational-resource-at-2013-sxsw-interactive\/\" target=\"_blank\">award-winning<\/a>, open-source community project that is dedicated to visualizing the history of everything, I now have an effective way of collecting, presenting, and managing all of these resources. A joint effort of the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/eps.berkeley.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">University of California, Berkeley<\/a>; <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msu.ru\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\">Moscow State University<\/a>; the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.outercurve.org\/About\" target=\"_blank\">Outercurve Foundation<\/a>; and Microsoft Research Connections, ChronoZoom lets my students navigate through time, from the Big Bang to recent historical events, stopping to study detailed information at any point in history. With the ability to compare events that occurred in the distant past with what\u2019s going on in the present, my students can better understand how we know that today\u2019s warming climate is driven by human activities. For example, by using data derived from ice cores and thermometers, they can examine how changes in temperature relate to events in human and pre-human history.<\/p>\n<p>By using ChronoZoom, I\u2019m developing a history of Earth that illustrates changes in climate from the beginning of the planet through modern day. I\u2019m including images, diagrams, graphs, and time-lapse movies that illustrate changes in the environment, pulling these resources together to create tours: explanatory narratives that my students can explore at any speed and level of detail they want. They can skip over some details and dive deep into others. They can zoom rapidly from one time period to another, moving through history as quickly or slowly as they want.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 506px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0px currentColor;\" title=\"By using ChronoZoom, Dozier is developing a history of Earth that illustrates changes in climate from the beginning of the planet through modern day. \" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/8463.ChronoZoom-climate-2screens_496px.jpg\" alt=\"By using ChronoZoom, Dozier is developing a history of Earth that illustrates changes in climate from the beginning of the planet through modern day. \" width=\"496\" height=\"254\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">By using ChronoZoom,\u00a0Dozier is developing a history of Earth that illustrates changes in climate from the beginning of the planet through modern day.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Because ChronoZoom operates in the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere through any modern web browser, teachers and schools don\u2019t have to invest in new equipment or software. That\u2019s definitely a plus, especially in these days of tight budgets. But for my money, the best value lies in the volume and depth of material that can be packed into a single ChronoZoom timeline. Moreover, thanks to <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Azure<\/a>, the tool has the flexibility to scale up and down, so that even projects that focus on but a sliver of the history of everything\u2014such as the history of humanity or maybe just the twentieth century or the last couple of weeks\u2014still benefit from presentation in ChronoZoom.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 5px; border: 0px currentColor; float: right;\" title=\"Dozier's timeline includes images, diagrams, graphs, and time-lapse movies that illustrate changes in the environment.\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/1464.ChronoZoom-climate-glacier_270x180.jpg\" alt=\"Dozier's timeline includes images, diagrams, graphs, and time-lapse movies that illustrate changes in the environment.\" \/>What\u2019s more, I\u2019ll be able to share my tours with other teachers\u2014and take advantage of theirs\u2014because we can all upload our information to the cloud, making our data, images, and text available in any Internet-connected classroom. Our students can do this, too, creating and sharing their own tours.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure that ChronoZoom is going to change the way I teach and, more importantly, the way students learn, and I encourage anyone with an interest in understanding the interconnections of history to put their own content into ChronoZoom.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/bren.ucsb.edu\/people\/Faculty\/jeff_dozier.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Dozier<\/a>, Professor of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Learn more<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chronozoom.com\" target=\"_blank\">ChronoZoom<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/academic-program\/microsoft-azure-for-research\/\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Azure for Research<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Azure homepage<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/chronozoom-climate-change_cs.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Read the full case study<\/a>\u00a0(PDF file, 492 KB)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/video\/building-an-historical-view-of-climate-change-in-the-cloud-with-chronozoom\/\" target=\"_blank\">Watch the video<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/bren.ucsb.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/chronozoom-named-top-educational-resource-at-2013-sxsw-interactive\/\" target=\"_blank\">ChronoZoom Named Top Educational Resource at 2013 SXSW Interactive<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/chronozoom-receives-digital-education-achievement-award\/\" target=\"_blank\">ChronoZoom Receives Digital Education Achievement Award<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/chronozoom\/\" target=\"_blank\">ChronoZoom project page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting in the tenth century, during the Medieval Warm Period, Greenland was a fraction of a degree warmer than today. Norse settlers raised livestock and cultivated small farms. Later, in the fifteenth century, a colder climate and conflicts with the Inuit caused them to abandon their settlements. Critics of anthropogenic global warming cite this earlier [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[205399,197938,194478],"tags":[194809,193603,193650,195040,186460,195055,195269,186434,187211,193604,195801,193651,186686,196439,196551,187102,196761,187285,197334,186419,197490,197586,197587],"research-area":[198583],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-azure","category-case-studies","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-big-history","tag-chronozoom","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-warming","tag-cloud","tag-cloud-services","tag-data-sharing","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-history","tag-history-of-earth","tag-jeff-dozier","tag-learning","tag-microsoft-research-connections","tag-moscow-state-university","tag-open-source","tag-outercurve-foundation","tag-research","tag-students","tag-teaching","tag-tours","tag-university-of-california-berkeley","tag-university-of-california-santa-barbara","msr-research-area-ecology-environment","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[204068],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[170562],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"November 20, 2013","formattedExcerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Pwtpseb9fOM Starting in the tenth century, during the Medieval Warm Period, Greenland was a fraction of a degree warmer than today. Norse settlers raised livestock and cultivated small farms. Later, in the fifteenth century, a colder climate and conflicts with the Inuit caused them to&hellip;","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281645,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/281645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}