Core maths – extreme weather

In this lesson students examine whether reports of extreme cold weather provide evidence that global warming is not happening. They look at the New York Times graphs of summer temperature distributions for the northern hemisphere for different periods and interrogate/critique these graphs.

Students will read scales, use standard form to write very large or very small numbers, fit a normal distribution or bell curve to a graph and explore the effect of adjusting mean and standard deviation on a bell curve in the context of understanding the probability of extreme cold weather despite global warming. The resource helps students understand that probabilities can be represented and calculated using areas, and analyse and compare data in order to develop and present a conclusion.