WorksheetPremium

One Dry Year or a Warming Trend? Questions From a Farm County

Grade 6 earth science: a farm county's drought year, a century of records and global gas data help students ask questions about what is warming Earth.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS3-5

Buy this worksheet: $1.50

Or unlock every Premium worksheet with Premium

PrintUnlock to print

Answer keyUnlock to see answers

Assign to classUnlock to assign with a class code

What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
10 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use long-term records to tell one year's weather from a climate trend.
Students ask testable questions about factors that have raised global temperatures.
Students use data to judge which factors could explain a century of warming.

How to use

Start by asking students how one dry year differs from a change over many decades. Let them work the data questions first, then discuss which questions they would bring to a climate scientist.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS3-5

Ask questions about the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

Preview

OwlSheets.com

Name Date

One Dry Year or a Warming Trend? Questions From a Farm County

Tell weather from climate and ask questions about what is warming Earth.

The county's records

Read the passage and study the table and graph. Then answer the questions.

A Dry Year in Prairie Bend

1In Prairie Bend County, 2025 was the driest year most farmers could remember. Corn leaves curled in July, and some wells ran low. At a meeting in the county's farm hall, a farmer named Mr. Augustin Laroche asked, "Is this what global warming looks like, or is it just a bad year?" Sixth grader Bram Visser, a member of the county's 4-H club, decided to find out what kinds of questions scientists ask about warming. The county and its numbers are made up, but the global data are based on real measurements, rounded.

2The county extension agent, Ms. Dolores Etsitty, explained that weather is what happens over days, weeks or a single season, while climate is the usual pattern of weather over 30 years or more. One dry year is weather. To learn about climate, scientists look at records that cover many decades. She gave Bram the county's weather records in Table 1 and the rain gauge totals for the last six years in the graph.

3Then she showed him Table 2. Earth's average surface temperature has risen by more than 1 °C since the late 1800s, and scientists study many possible factors. Some are natural, such as changes in the energy given off by the Sun. Others come from people. Burning coal, oil and gas releases carbon dioxide (CO₂). Nitrous oxide (N₂O) is released when bacteria in the soil break down nitrogen fertilizer and manure. Both gases are greenhouse gases: they absorb energy given off by Earth's surface and send some of it back down.

4Ms. Etsitty added one more fact. In a drought, dry soil has little water to evaporate, so on sunny days more of the sun's energy warms the ground and the air just above it. That can make a dry summer hotter in one place for a while. "A good scientific question," she said, "is one you can answer with measurements. It should also be clear whether it asks about one year or about a change over many decades."