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DIY Glacier Modeling with
Virtual Earth System Laboratory

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A new NASA research
tool lets you

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run your own climate
modeling experiment.

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My name's Eric Larour.
I'm a scientist

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at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.

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I work on the Ice Sheet
System Model,

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which is a software
at NASA that we use

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to predict the evolution
of polar ice caps.

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The Columbia Glacier is
a very large glacier

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in Alaska that is melting fast.

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What we would like to
do here is understand

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what happens to this glacier

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if we increase the amount of
snow that falls on it.

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We have built an interface on
the website called “VESL”

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━which is the Virtual Earth
System Laboratory━

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where you can carry
out simulations

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the way we scientists
at NASA do.

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We have a very nice simple
setup here with a slider,

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which controls the snow
that falls onto the glacier.

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You can slide it to
the right side,

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increasing the amount of snow,

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to the left side decreasing
the amount of snow.

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Then you just click
on “Run” here.

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We are grabbing,
literally, this glacier.

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Packaging it. Send it
to   to a NASA server.

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Running it on the ISSM software
itself that we rely on.

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And we are downloading the
results back to this website

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and displaying it
as a movie here.

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All the red spots
here on this glacier

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are showing an increase
in thickness.

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You can see that not every area

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has the same amount
of thickness.

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And the valleys seem to be
collecting most of the snow.

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It's not something you can guess
just by observing the system.

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Nothing that you use
on VESL is prerecorded

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or like a video on YouTube.

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It is really something that is
being simulated on the fly

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using NASA servers.

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Check out other simulations we
have on the VESL website.

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One of my favorites is the
evolution of sea level

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along the coastlines
of Texas or Florida.

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You can really see the impact of

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the evolution of polar
ice caps on the local coastline.

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https://vesl.jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory