Climate Change and Energy Exhibits

Visitors to the Museum of the Earth and the Cayuga Nature Center can learn about climate change and energy through permanent and temporary exhibits.

Permanent Exhibits

Changing Climate: Our Future, Our Choice

An exhibit on climate change, its impacts, and what we can do about it.

Click here to see an online version of this exhibit.

Click here to download a teacher’s guide to the exhibit.

Museum of the Earth

Glacier Exhibit

Visitors to the Glacier exhibit can immerse themselves in an ice cave environment as they learn about how glaciers form, move, and change, and how glaciers worldwide are changing in response to a changing climate.

Museum of the Earth

Live Coral Reef Aquaria

Our live coral reef aquaria focus on two different reef ecosystems—the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean—and provide opportunities for learning about how these sensitive ecosystems and the oceans are affected by climate change.

Museum of the Earth

Climate Change in Central New York

Learn about the local impacts of climate change in Tompkins County, especially for ecosystems and agriculture. At the Cayuga Nature Center, you can pick up materials in the Leopold Family Climate Room to take part in a tree phenology community science project.

Click here to see an online version of this exhibit

Temporary Exhibits

At the Museum of the Earth we create and host temporary exhibits on climate change. Recent examples include Moving Carbon, Changing Earth, an exhibit developed in-house about the carbon cycle and about Cornell scientist Natalie Mahowald’s carbon cycle modeling research; Then & Now: the Changing Arctic Landscape about climate change in Alaska and its effect on glaciers, vegetation, and permafrost over the last 100 years; and Our Expanding Oceans, a collaboration between artist Mary Edna Fraser and geoscientist Orrin Pilkey that expands visitors’ views on the ways climate change is affecting coasts around the planet.

Moving Carbon, Changing Earth

Our Expanding Oceans [from Mary Edna Fraser and Orrin Pilkey]

Then & Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape [from University of Alaska Museum of the North]

Weird Weather

Weird Weather, a small traveling exhibit developed by PRI, has been on display at libraries, nature centers, town halls, fairs, agricultural expos, and schools across New York State. The exhibit was informed by a survey of perceptions of climate change by residents of rural communities in Upstate New York as well as an extensive literature review on best practices in communicating climate change science with the public. The exhibit personalizes the growing effects of climate change in New York State, and connects scientific data to issues such as public health, energy conservation, and farming.