What do you think of when you hear someone say “climate change”? Maybe you think of sea level rise, maybe fossil fuel usage, or maybe the future of polar bears. I think of computer modeling. The idea of computer modeling can seem intimidating at first, but it is one of the most powerful and exciting tools we have in order to make decisions about how to adapt our communities in a changing world.
When I was in second grade, my class made a model volcano from paper mache, chicken wire, and baking soda and vinegar. Though it didn’t work exactly like a real volcano, it helped contribute to my understanding of volcanoes and chemical reactions. (And as a bonus it was fun and messy!) Now, I’m modeling glaciers. Instead of having a physical model of paper mache, I have a series of equations in a computer. These equations describe how a glacier melts, grows, and flows. They aren’t always perfect, because they are an idealization of the very complicated processes that occur in ice and snow – some of which we don’t fully understand yet – but they do a good job at replicating the way we have observed glaciers changing over many years.
Once we know that the equations that we have to describe a glacier are a reasonable representation of reality, we can conduct experiments using this model. If we want to know what could happen to glaciers if the temperature warms up and the amount of rain increases, we can change the variables in our model, and then run the model to find out. It is impossible to conduct this experiment in reality. We can’t go to a glacier and warm up the air around it to see what happens, right? (Though, in a sense that is what is happening with climate change, but it is important that we understand the possible results of this experiment, instead of just waiting to find out). We know that climate change will have drastic effects on glaciers. Using a model allows us to consider how those effects might unfold before they happen, so that we have a chance to make decisions about adapting our water ways, agricultural systems, and other infrastructure connected to glaciers.
I will be starting my graduate school and research journey this coming fall at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. At this point, I’m not sure what my specific research question will be, but I do know that I want to model how glaciers could change in the future, and what that means for communities that rely on the water resources from those glaciers. Glaciers are a critical freshwater source for people around the world, and we need to start thinking about how access to that water will change as glaciers change, and about what things we can put in place to lessen the forces of a changing world. It is easy to think of computer modeling as trying to predict the future, but nobody and no model can do that. Instead, computer modeling provides a space to consider possible scenarios of an uncertain future, and I’m excited to explore these scenarios in my research and hopefully provide relevant information for communities that are tied to glaciers and their changes.
– Aurora, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA