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Welcome to OGGM-Edu!

OGGM-Edu is an educational website about glaciers.

Our main goal is to provide tools and materials for instructors who want to teach about glaciers at school, in workshops or at the university.

For a general introduction and an overview, visit this recent EGU cryoblog post!

OGGM-Edu has four independent and complementary components:

  1. Interactive apps, to illustrate glaciological processes with the help of interactive graphics on the web. The targeted audience is very broad, from school children to adults, with or without scientific background.

  2. Graphics, open access images and graphics that can be used for lectures or presentations.

  3. Interactive Notebooks, for students willing to run and develop their own experiments. The targeted audience are students at the undergrad or graduate level with some programming experience, or under the supervision of an instructor who can show them how to run the experiments.

  4. OGGM tutorials, for current and future users of the Open Global Glacier Model. These notebooks are targetting graduate students or scientists aiming to learn how the model works.

OGGM-Edu focuses on interactive content and numerical glacier experiments. We do not provide teaching resources about fundamentals in glaciology or climate science: for fundamental textbook material, refer to Other educational resources, which OGGM-Edu intends to complement.

Interactive apps

These interactive apps can be run on any computer with an internet connection.

World Glaciers Explorer

_images/explorer_thumbnail.png

The world glacier explorer is an interactive web application with which you can learn (and teach) about the world’s glaciers, their location, their climate, and the ice they store. By “glaciers”, we mean all glaciers outside of the two continental ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica).

You can start the app by clicking on this link: badge_bokeh_en

Alternatively, you can start the app on mybinder (slightly slower in general, but a good alternative if our server is saturated). If you want to run the app on your own computer, see Launching from Docker below.

The app contains five elements:

  • the world map (upper right) displays thg glaciers’ location, with the color shading indicating the total glacier area in each pixel. Moving the mouse over a glacier pixel displays its exact glaciated area. When selecting a box on the map, the other elements in the app will update accordingly. Above the map, there is a toolbar: with the “Box Zoom” button, you can also zoom into a specific region. Click on “Reset” to set the map back to defaults (see the video below for a demo). Be aware that the map projection is slightly misleading: high latitudes appear much bigger on the map than they really are.

  • the clear selection button on the left resets the current glacier selection.

  • the bar plots (left of the map) indicate various statistics about the current glacier selection (default selection: all glaciers). The upper blue bar indicates the number of glaciers selected, the middle blue bar their total area, and the lower blue bar their estimated volume. This volume can be converted to its sea-level rise equivalent (in mm), which is the global sea-level rise to be expected if all glacier vanished. Only glaciers above sea-level are contributing to this figure, therefore there are two vertical orange bars: asl (above sea-level) and bsl (below sea-level). See the demo and explanations below on how to use this information.

  • the three climate histograms plots (lower row) display the distribution of the selected glaciers’ climate conditions. The y-axis is given in number of glaciers per bin, and the x-axis in the unit of the target variable (temperature trend, average temperature, average precipitation at the glacier location). Selecting a range of values in these plots also actualizes the map and the rest of the plots (see demo below).

  • the glacier elevation/altitude scatter plot (lower right) displays the average elevation of the glaciers on the map as a function of latitude (y-axis).

Questions to explore with this app

With this app, you can address many questions, by yourself or in class! For example:

  • How many glaciers are there on Earth? How much volume do they represent?

  • How much would the sea-level rise if all glaciers melted? All glaciers in the Alps? In the Himalayas? etc.

  • What is the relationship between latitude and glacier elevation? Why?

  • Where are the locations with highest precipitation? And the driests?

  • Is there a relationship between average temperature and average precipitation?

  • How much glacier area is found on Greenland? In the European Alps? How does these number compare to, say, the area of Berlin, France, Mexico?

  • Does the number of glaciers in a region always correlate with their total volume?

  • What regions are most likely to contribute to sea-level rise? Where do we find glaciers with ice below sea-level?

  • Where are the glaciers which are warming the fastest? Why?

  • Where are the wettest glaciers in the Himalayas? (select all Himalayan glaciers first, then the wettest). Can you explain why?

  • Repeat the excercise above with other regions: Greenland, the Alps, etc.

  • And many more!

Resources

Authors

Philipp Rudiger and James Bednar from HoloViz and Anaconda Inc., based on an original Dash application by Fabien Maussion. Zora Schirmeister improved the app with new data, plots, and an improved layout.

Data sources

Glacier location, elevation and area are obtained from the Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6. The climate data (temperature, precipitation, trends) is extracted from ERA5 data provided by the ECMWF. The glacier volume was provided by Farinotti et al., (2019)

Source code

Code and data are on GitHub, MIT licensed.

Launching from Docker

This application should work quite well online, either on our server or on mybinder. But you can also start the app locally, which will make it faster and less dependent on an internet connection (although you still need one to download the app, display the logos and the map).

To start the app locally, all you’ll need is to have Docker installed on your computer. From there, run this command into a terminal:

docker run -e BOKEH_ALLOW_WS_ORIGIN=127.0.0.1 -p 8080:80 oggm/bokeh:20191210 git+https://github.com/OGGM/world-glacier-explorer.git app.ipynb

Once running, you should be able to start the app in your browser at this address: http://127.0.0.1:8080/.

Possible future improvements

  • With a category choice bar, it would be possible to differentiate glaciers from ice-caps or marine terminating glaciers from land-terminating ones.

  • We could also simplify the app for younger target audiences, with less panels and less distraction.

Glacier Simulator

_images/simulator_thumbnail.png

The glacier simulator is an interactive web application with which you can learn (and teach) about glacier flow, how glaciers grow and shrink, what glacier properties influence their size or velocity, and a lot more!

You can start the app by clicking on this link: badge_bokeh_en

Important

The glacier simulator app runs a numerical glacier model in the background, using computer resources on the cloud. If several people are using the app at the same time, the server might become slow or unresponsive. In this case, we recommend to use the app on MyBinder or even locally on your own computer (see Launching from Docker below).

Getting started with the app

The upper panel in the app is a guided tutorial about the app’s functionalities. You can navigate it with the “Next” and “Previous” buttons, or use the “Find help here” overview.

Questions to explore with this app

With this app, you can address many questions, by yourself or in class! This list will grow in the future (documentation takes time!).

Glacier shape

See antarcticglaciers.org (mass-balance) for an introduction about glacier mass-balance and the ELA, or our Introduction to glaciers graphics for an illustration.

In “beginner mode”, start by setting the ELA to 3000m a.s.l, and note on a piece of paper: the equilibrium volume of the glacier, its length and maximal thickness. Now choose the “wider top” glacier shape and run the model again. Is the new glacier larger or smaller than before? Why?

Take home messages

A glacier with a wider top has a larger accumulation area. It can therefore accumulate more mass (more ice) in the upper part. The glacier can flow further down until melt rates become large enough to compensate for this additional ice.

Take home messages (advanced)

An additional (and more advanced) observation can be done by looking at the “Accumulation Area Ratio” (AAR) of the two glaciers. In the “constant width” case, the glacier area is the same above and below the ELA (equilibrium AAR = 0.5, only true if the mass-balance gradient is also constant). In the “wider-top” case, the AAR at equilibrium is larger than 0.5: indeed, by flowing further down valley, the glacier is loosing more mass at its terminus than at its head, albeit over a different area (width). See our AAR (Accumulation Area Ratio) experiments to learn more about the AAR.

Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA)

See antarcticglaciers.org (mass-balance) for an introduction about glacier mass-balance and the ELA, or our Introduction to glaciers graphics for an illustration.

We are going to show that the ELA is determinant in shaping glaciers.

In “beginner mode”, start by setting the ELA to 2500m a.s.l, and note on a piece of paper: the equilibrium volume of the glacier, its length and maximal thickness.

Now change the ELA up to 3500m a.s.l in 200m increments and, at each step, note the equilibrium volume of the glacier, its length and maximal thickness.

Now draw these variables on a graph, as a function of the ELA. How does glacier volume change with ELA? Can you explain why? What about glacier length and thickness? Are these changes linear, or more complex?

Take home messages

An example graphic that students could come up with by varying the ELA with different shapes:

_images/simulator_ela_example.png

The lower the ELA, the larger the equilibrium glacier. The length, volume or maximal thickness are not necessarily linear functions of the ELA: these depend on the physical relationships between ice flow and slope, as well as the feedback between glacier elevation and mass-balance.

Glacier slope

The slope of a glacier bed is one key ingredient which determines glacier flow. For an introduction, visit antarcticglaciers.org (glacier-flow). In short: glaciers flow downslope driven by the gravitational force. This force can be decomposed into an along-slope component and perpendicular to the slope component (see this illustration in wikipedia). The along-slope component “pulls” the glacier downwards and the perpendicular component “flattens” the glacier.

Experiments:

  • Beginner: Use beginner mode with standard settings (constant width, mass balance gradient of 4 and ELA of 3000) and run the model with all different settings for the slope and use the geometry plot for inspection. Take note on a piece of paper of the ice thickness, volume, area and length at the end of each model run.

  • Advanced: Conduct the same experiment as for Beginner, but additionally switch on the timeseries plot. Also take notes of the velocity and look how the parameters change with time in the timeseries plot.

Questions to answer:

  • Beginner: which glaciers are thicker? Steep or flat ones? And why?

  • Advanced: which glaciers are faster? Steep or flat ones? How and why does the velocity change with time?

Take home messages

  • glaciers flow downslope under gravity

  • the steeper the slope the thinner the glacier (larger along-slope gravitational force)

  • the flatter the slope the larger the equilibrium velocity. When the glacier is thin (has not much mass) the along-slope component is more important. When the glacier is getting thicker the perpendicular component is getting more weight. This partly explains slower velocities for flatter slopes at the start of the model run, and higher velocities when the glacier is getting thicker. For steeper slopes the velocities at the start are large and so more ice is transported downwards, and the glacier stays relatively thin.

Surging glaciers

Some of the world’s glaciers experience “surges” during which they flow much faster than usual and can advance dramatically. For an introduction see antarcticglaciers.org (surging-glaciers) , or this video of surging Karakorum glaciers seen from space.

We will use the simulator app to explore the characteristics of a surging glacier.

Experiment:

Use the “beginner mode” with standard settings (constant width, mass balance gradient of 4 and ELA of 3000) and run the model to create a glacier in equilibrium. This glacier should now experience a surge which lasts for ten years: Switch into the “advanced mode”. Turn on “sliding”, i.e. the glacier will “slip” on the bedrock, and let the model advance for 10 years. Between surge events long periods of quiescence happen: simulate one by advancing your glacier without sliding for 100 years. Repeat the surge event and the period of quiescence. Use the timeseries plots and the timeseries options to show the maximum velocity as well as the maximum thickness.

Questions to answer:

Beginner:

During a surge event:

  • How much faster is the glacier during a surge in comparison to a “normal” (quiescence) period?

  • How much gains the glacier in length?

After a surge event:

  • How can you explain the glacier retreat?

Advanced:

  • Why is the glacier thinning during a surge?

  • How can you explain the opposing behaviours of length and volume during a surge?

  • Why is the glacier thickening after the surge?

Take home messages

  • during a surge event: The glacier flows faster and reaches lower in the valley. In the upper parts the accumulation of snow does change, but not much (accumulation is slightly less since the glacier is thinner: a process called mass-balance / elevation feedback). At the same time, a much larger area than usual of the glacier is exposed to melt below the ELA. Therefore the glacier thins and looses volume, although it is still advancing.

  • after a surge event: The glacier flow recovers its usual “slow” velocity. The glacier will retreat until it accumulated enough ice to advance again.

Going further:

In the Notebook Surging glaciers you can use OGGM to simulate surging events in Python yourself.

Velocity and thickness along the glacier

Experiments:

  • Beginner: Use “Beginner mode” to simulate a glacier in equilibrium with Width = Constant, ELA = 3000, Mass-balance gradient = 4 and Slope = 11°.

  • Advanced: Use “Beginner mode” to simulate a glacier with Width = Wide top, narrow bottom, ELA = 3500, Mass-balance gradient = 4 and Slope = 11°.

Questions to answer:

  • Make a guess as to where the ice velocity along the glacier is largest?

  • When you made your guess, go to “Geometry opt.” and tick the box Ice velocity (top left) and Ice thickness (bottom left). Now the red/blue colors are showing the velocity/thickness distribution along the glacier. Did you guess correctly?

  • Advanced: what is the influence of the glacier bed bottleneck (narrowing) on ice thickness and velocity? Why?

Take home messages

  • Beginner:
    • mass is accumulated from the top of the glacier down to the ELA (areas of positive mass-balance): all this mass must be transported downwards, and so the ice flux at equilibrium is largest at the ELA. Larger ice flux means thicker ice and faster glacier flow.

    • below the ELA, mass is constantly ablated and the ice flux decreases: lower ice flux means thinner ice and reduced glacier flow velocity.

  • Advanced:
    • a narrowing of glacier widths means that the same amount of ice needs to be transported through a smaller door: this means that we have both the creation of a “traffic jam” (thickening) and an increase of ice velocity in order to transport more mass downwards.

    • in this case, the maximum velocity is no longer located around the ELA but further down (at the bottleneck)

Mass-balance gradient

See antarcticglaciers.org (mass-balance) for an introduction about glacier mass-balance and the mass-balance gradient.

In short: The climatic regime determines the glacier mass-balance gradient. Discovering global glacier locations using the World Glaciers Explorer reveals that glaciers can be found in quite different climates around the world. Here, we will now discover how different mass-balance gradients are shaping glaciers.

Experiments:

  • First, simulate a glacier in a maritime climate in temperate latitudes (larger mass-balance gradient, e.g. 10). For this, use the “Beginner mode” (ELA = 3000, Width = Constant and Slope = 11°) and let the glacier grow until it reaches equilibrium and note on a piece of paper: the equilibrium Time, Length, Area, Volume, Max ice thickness and Max ice velocity of the glacier.

  • Next, simulate a glacier in a continental climate in polar latitudes (smaller Mass Balance gradient, e.g. 3) and take some notes again.

Questions to answer:

  • Beginner:
    • Which of the two glaciers (maritime or continental) is thicker (Max ice thickness)?

    • Which is flowing faster (Max ice velocity)?

    • Which reaches the equilibrium faster (Time)?

  • Advanced:
    • How are Length, Area and Volume affected?

Take home messages

  • the larger the mass-balance gradient, the larger the accumulation of mass (ice) at the top

  • more accumulation leads to a thicker glacier and a larger downslope component of the gravitational force (see the Glacier slope experiment)

  • this larger force causes a larger ice flux and a larger ice velocity

  • the larger the ice velocity the faster ice is transported downwards and the faster the equilibrium is reached

  • length and area are not much affected due to the unchanged linear mass-balance profile: no matter which gradient is selected, the total ice gain/loss at a certain height is only determined by the distance away from the ELA (e.g. the same amount of mass is accumulated 100 m above the ELA as there is mass ablated 100 m below the ELA, with a constant width)

  • whereas the volume is increasing with a increasing mass-balance gradient due to a larger ice thickness

AAR (Accumulation Area Ratio)

The AAR is the ratio of the accumulation area (= area above the ELA) to the total glacier area (see antarcticglaciers.org (mass-balance)). In this experiment we will have a look at the equilibrium (or balanced) AAR (AAR-eq) and the transient (or annual) AAR (AAR-t). Let’s make some experiments to see what the AAR can tell us about glaciers. For the interpretation of the experiments, note that the total ice gain/loss at a certain elevation equals the mass-balance (black line in top right figure) times the area (i.e., width) at the same elevation. This is important!

Experiments:

  • Beginner: Use “Beginner mode” and conduct runs with Width = Constant and Width = Wide top, narrow bottom, and note down the different AAR-eq (ELA = 3300, Mass-balance gradient = 4, Slope = 11°).

  • Advanced: Conduct experiments with Constant width and different mass-balance gradients (e.g. Mass-balance gradient below ELA = 4, Mass-balance gradient above ELA = 2 and vice versa) in “Advanced mode”. Note down the different AAR-eq.

Questions to answer:

  • Beginner:
    • Explain the observed AAR-eq for Constant width and for Wide top, narrow bottom.

    • For Constant width, what values of AAR-t (below or above 0.5) do you expect for an advancing and a retreating glacier? Can you confirm by looking at the AAR during the simulation, or using the timeseries plots.

  • Advanced:
    • How is AAR-eq changing with a different mass-balance gradients below and above the ELA?

    • What can you conclude from the experiments about real-world glaciers which have a typical AAR-eq between 0.5 and 0.8? (see for example Hawkins, 1985)

Take home messages

  • Beginner:
    • In the Constant width case and a linear mass-balance, the AAR is around 0.5. The total ice gain/loss at a certain height is only determined by the distance away from the ELA (e.g. the same amount of mass is accumulated 100 m above the ELA as there is mass ablated 100 m below the ELA) and so the glacier area above the ELA equals the glacier area below (approximately).

    • In the Wide top, narrow bottom case and a linear mass-balance, the AAR is around 0.6. In this case the total ice gain/loss at a certain height is not only determined by the distance away from the ELA but also from the width at a certain height (e.g. if the width 100 m above the ELA is double the width of 100 m below the ELA, so the total ice gain is double of the total ice loss at 100 m from the ELA). In this case the glacier length is longer compared with the case of constant width and in the lower altitudes the more negative mass-balance leads to more ice melt. Overall, the ablation area (area below ELA) stays smaller than the accumulation area, even with a longer glacier.

    • For an advancing glacier with constant width the AAR-t is well above 0.5 (mass gain), and in the retreating case well below 0.5 (mass loss).

  • Advanced:
    • With a mass-balance gradient below the ELA twice the gradient above the ELA, the total ice loss is twice the total ice gain going the same distance away from the ELA. Therefore, the ablation area (area below the ELA) only needs to be half of the accumulation area at equilibrium. For the AAR-eq this means a value of approx. 0.6 (AAR = Ablation Area / Total Area = Ablation Area / (Accumulation Area + Ablation Area) = Ablation Area / (0.5 * Ablation Area + Ablation Area) = 1 / 1.5 = 2 / 3).

    • For real glaciers in equilibrium with AAR between 0.5 and 0.8, we can assume wider tops and larger mass-balance gradients below the ELA.

Balance Ratio, in the footsteps of a paleo-glaciologist

In this experiment we are using knowledge about Balance Ratios to estimate the height of the ELA (and past climate conditions). The Balance Ratio is defined as the ratio of the mass-balance gradient below the ELA to the mass-balance gradient above the ELA (e.g. Mass-balance gradient below the ELA = 4 and Mass-balance gradient above the ELA = 2 gives a Balance Ratio of 2). See antarcticglaciers.org (mass-balance) for an introduction about glacier mass-balance and the ELA, or our Introduction to glaciers graphics for an illustration.

In short: the height of the ELA is determined by temperature, among other things. In a warming climate, the ELA is increasing.

Experiment:

  • You made expeditions to the European Alps and Kamchatka to find two glacier areas of the last glaciological maximum, by using landmarks (e.g. abrasive erosion, moraines, …). You want to use this information to approximate the ELA height and compare the past climates at these locations (note that this experiment is only fictional).

  • For the European Alps glacier you found an approximated past area of 3 km². The glacier geometry is a Linear bedrock profile with a slope of 11° and wide top, narrow bottom width along the glacier (typical shape for a glacier).

  • For the Kamchatka glacier the past area was also approx. 3 km². This glacier is getting flatter (bedrock profile) and getting narrower (width along glacier).

  • You know that a typical Balance Ratio for the European Alps is around 1.5 and for the Kamchatka around 3 (e.g. Rea, 2009).

Questions:
  • Use the simulator and change its parameters in a “try and error” approach to find the corresponding past ELAs.

  • Which of the two glaciers was located in a warmer environment at that time?

  • How do different absolute values of the mass-balance gradients change your results?

  • What additional information would be useful to know about our past glaciers in order to determine the absolute values of the mass-balance gradients?

Take home messages

  • Using the correct Balance Ratios, we find the following ELAs: Alps ELA = 3100 m and Kamchatka ELA = 2000

  • From the ELA elevations, one can conclude that the past (fictional) climate in the Alps was warmer than in Kamchatka.

  • Different magnitudes of the mass-balance gradients do not change the results a lot, but they do affect the ice thickness.

  • Additional information about the maximum thickness could help to find the absolute gradient values.

Authors

Patrick Schmitt (main author) and Fabien Maussion.

Source code

Code and data are on GitHub, BSD licensed.

Launching from Docker

This application can keep a single processor quite busy when running. Fortunately, you can also start the app locally, which will make it faster and less dependent on an internet connection (although you still need one to download the app and display the logos).

To start the app locally, all you’ll need is to have Docker installed on your computer. From there, run this command into a terminal:

docker run -e BOKEH_ALLOW_WS_ORIGIN=127.0.0.1 -p 8080:8080 oggm/bokeh:20200406 git+https://github.com/OGGM/glacier_simulator.git app.ipynb

Once running, you should be able to start the app in your browser at this address: http://127.0.0.1:8080/.

Future evolution of glaciers in the European Alps

_images/alps_future_thumbnail.png

Find out about the future evolution of glaciers in the European Alps! This interactive graphic displays the volume change of all alpine glaciers under three different RCP-scenarios. In addition, the glacier evolution of the different alpine countries can be compared.

To start the app, click on this link: badge_bokeh_en

Data sources

Data: Zekollari et al. (2019)

Source code

Code and data are on GitHub, BSD3 licensed.

Possible future app improvements: see this issue

Graphics

Open access images and graphics that can be used for lectures or presentations.

Introduction to glaciers

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/gif/glacier.gif

A collection of free glacier graphics that can be used for education and outreach.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

https://licensebuttons.net/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png

Feel free to use / adapt the graphics, but always refer to the original author and share them with a compatible license.

Author: Anne Maussion, Atelier les Gros yeux

This series of graphics was designed for a talk given by Fabien Maussion to a general audience. He used them to explain the concepts of accumulation, ablation, equilibrium line altitude and mass movements in a glacier.

Download: zip file, gif

Single images with explanations

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_01.png

The first image just sets the scene and allows to explain that we are now looking at a typical mountain glacier from a cross-section along the main ice flow.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_02.png

We then announce that we are looking at the processes at the glacier surface first. This helps to bring the focus to it first.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_03.png

Accumulation: definition, which processes are at play, how you measure it, typical values… The time you want to spend on it is up to you. Note that some snow flakes now appears on the upper left corner!

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_04.png

Ablation: definition, which processes are at play, how you measure it, typical values… The time you want to spend on it is up to you. Note that a sun now appears on the upper right corner!

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_05.png

Mass Balance: definition, over which period you measure it, typical values… The time you want to spend on it is up to you. Note that the formula is now complete!

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_06.png

The imbalance between accumulation and ablation is compensated by a movement of ice from top to bottom. If this is where you want to bring your talk to, you can use the mass flux arrow to explain the principles of ice thickness inversion using mass conservation principles.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_07.png

Concept of Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA).

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_08.png

More accumulation and/or less ablation leads to a decrease of the ELA. You might want to highlight the changes in surface mass budget as well as the increased solid precipitation and/or the shaded sun.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_09.png

This new imbalance increases the flux of ice through the glacier (hence the wider arrow) and results in a glacier advance. See the response time section below for a companion graphic.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_10.png

Less accumulation and/or more ablation leads to an increase of the ELA. You might want to highlight the changes in surface mass budget as well as the decreased solid precipitation and/or the stronger sun.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_intro/thumbnails/glacier_11.png

This new imbalance decreases the flux of ice through the glacier (hence the thinner arrow) and results in a glacier retreat. See Glacier as low-pass filters for a companion graphic.

Glacier as low-pass filters

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_response/png/tau_04.png

A collection of free glacier graphics that can be used for education and outreach.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

https://licensebuttons.net/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png

Feel free to use / adapt the graphics, but always refer to the original author and share them with a compatible license.

Author: Fabien Maussion with the OGGM model.

Code: on GitHub

Interactive notebook: MyBinder link

Image download: zip file

This series of graphics was used right after the graphics above to explain the concepts of response time (or time constant) and low-pass filter.

There are several stages to click through (useful for presentations):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_response/png/tau_01.png
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_response/png/tau_02.png
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_response/png/tau_03.png
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OGGM/glacier-graphics/master/glacier_response/png/tau_04.png

Interactive Notebooks

Collection of notebooks with simple experiments explaining one or more glaciological concepts. They are relatively easy to follow and adapt with some background in programming, and we are working to make them as accessible as possible. Read our Introduction to interactive notebooks first if you are new to these things.

Introduction to interactive notebooks

If you plan to use OGGM-Edu’s educational notebooks (either on your own or in a class), we strongly recommend to read this short information page.

Jupyter notebooks

The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live computer code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. In OGGM-Edu, we use notebooks to design and share glacier modelling experiments.

If you are new to Jupyter Notebooks, don’t be scared! You can learn about them and try them out on the Jupyter website . We also have prepared a tutorial for you on OGGM-Edu. Open it in your browser with:

badge_edu_intro_notebooks

This link will bring you to an interactive MyBinder environment. If you prefer to run the notebooks on your personal computer, you can always download them from our repository or as a zip-file. However, you will have to install OGGM locally for them to work!

MyBinder

MyBinder is a service that allows us to provide online computing environments in which OGGM-Edu notebooks can be read and executed. This is a fantastic service that runs on the cloud - each time a user clicks on an OGGM-Edu binder link, a so-called “virtual machine” is spun-up and made accessible via the web-browser.

Note

These binder environments are safe, anonymous, and temporary. Temporary means non-persistent: if you close the tab in which the environment was opened, it is lost. If you open the link again, a new environment will be created for you, without your previous modifications. Therefore, if you want to save your work for later (i.e. to be able to upload it in a future binder session), don’t forget to download the files you modified before leaving (see instructions below). Be aware that a Binder environment will be shut down after 10 minutes of inactivity (leaving your tab/window open will count as “activity” only if visible, i.e. leaving the tab open but navigating elsewhere will eventually shut down your session).

MyBinder is a free service provided generously by the Binder and Jupyter communities (FAQ). As such, you can expect some waiting time at launch and relatively limited computer resources. However, these resources should be more than enough to run the OGGM-Edu notebooks at home or for a workshop. If needed, we also provide dedicated servers for instructors: see Technical details for more information.

Starting a MyBinder environment

After clicking on an OGGM-Edu MyBinder link, you should see a loading page similar to the one below (here with the show log button activated):

_images/docs_binder_launch.png

A typical binder load page

This page indicates that a working OGGM-Edu environment (called an “image”) was found on the Binder database and is being started for you. This image loading can take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the current workload of the service and whether or not the image was already loaded on the virtual machine.

In rare cases, you might encouter a start log with more verbose output, such as this one:

_images/docs_binder_launch_build.png

A binder image build log

This occurs when the image needs to be created anew (refer to Technical details for more information about why this happens). In these rare cases, the builds can take up to 15 minutes. Be patient!

Note

Sometimes, the log screen might show an error of the type “Failed to connect to event stream”. When this happens, simply refresh your browser (or click on the OGGM-Edu link again)

JupyterLab

Once the Binder environment is ready, you should see a page similar to this:

_images/docs_binder_jlab.png

The JupyterLab environment with the three main areas highlighted.

This is the JupyterLab development environment. It is quite intuitive and most people find their way through it without major struggle, but you might want to have a look at the excellent documentation as well.

The three main areas highlighted above are:

  • Menu Bar (blue): top-level menus that expose actions available in JupyterLab

  • Left Sidebar (red): contains a number of commonly-used tabs, such as a file browser (most important), a list of running kernels (i.e.: notebooks) and terminals, the command palette, and a list of tabs in the main work area

  • Main Work Area (green): the main work area in JupyterLab enables you to arrange documents (notebooks, text files, etc.) and other activities into panels of tabs that can be resized or subdivided. Drag a tab to the center of a tab panel to move the tab to the panel. Subdivide a tab panel by dragging a tab to the left, right, top, or bottom of the panel

Download and upload files to MyBinder/JupyterLab

Since your MyBinder environment is temporary, you might find it useful to download the notebooks you modified during your session, and/or upload notebooks or data that you store on your computer.

To download a notebook, use the left sidebar’s file explorer: right-click on the file you’d like to download and select Download. You can also download the notebook in various static formats in the menu: FileExport Notebook As (we recommend html). Be aware that some formats might not export properly.

To upload a file or notebook, use the up-arrow button on the top of the sidebar: you can upload any file - text or data.

_images/docs_binder_upload.png

The JupyterLab’s upload button (red box)

OGGM-Edu notebooks

Currently we have 8 self-consistent notebooks for you to try out and adapt from!

Glacier flowline modelling

_images/intro_fig_flowline.png

Figure: Geometry of a glacier model after 500 years, that moves only from deformation processes.

This notebook is an introduction to flowline modelling with OGGM. To open the notebook in your browser use the button below:

badge_edu_notebooks

In this notebook we will set-up a simple model run and visualize it afterwards. Therefore we will learn how to define an easy glacier bed and a suitable grid. The learner will implement mass balance in the form of equilibrium line altitude (ELA) and see how his glacier develops in length, volume and area over certain years.

Prerequisites: If you are new to jupyter-notebook, have a look at this short Introduction to interactive notebooks. This notebook uses the Python programming language. If this is completely new for you, we recommend to go through an introductory tutorial first, or have a teacher or tutor help you out. No need to be a Python expert to be able to use it, though!

Ice flow parameters

_images/intro_fig_iceflow_parameters.png

Figure: Geometry of glacier models after 1500 years. Blue graph: glacier moves by deformation, orange graph: glacier that slides also.

In this notebook we will have a closer look at the parameters that describe ice flow: Glen’s creep parameter and the sliding parameter. We will implement them in our model and see their influence on glacier flow.

Open this experiment in your browser with the button below:

badge_edu_notebooks

Prerequisites: You went through the notebook about glacier flowline modelling, so that you understand the concept of building a simple glacier model with OGGM.

Surging glaciers

_images/intro_fig_surging_glaciers.png

Figure: Development of two surging glaciers. Upper graph: length, lower graph: volume.

Surging glaciers are glaciers experiencing periodic and sudden advances. You will learn how to simulate surging dynamics in a glacier model and run a few experiments with it. To open the notebook in your browser use the button below:

badge_edu_notebooks

Prerequisites:

  • You went through the notebook about glacier flowline modelling, so that you understand the concept of building a simple glacier model with OGGM.

  • It is helpful to work through the notebook about ice flow parameters first.

You find these notebooks here: Interactive Notebooks.

Mass balance gradient

_images/intro_fig_MBG.png

Left figure: Behaviour of different mass balance gradients. Right figure: Geometry of glaciers with different mass balance gradients after 300 years.

In this notebook you will run experiments with a focus on the mass balance gradient. You will see how different mass balance gradients influence the growth of a glacier. Therefore, we calculate our glacier models until they reach an equilibrium state and compare length, area and volume. In addition, we will calculate the volume response times of the glacier models to small climatic changes.

Open this experiment in your browser with the button below:

badge_edu_notebooks

Prerequisites: You went through the notebook about glacier flowline modelling, so that you understand the concept of building a simple glacier model with OGGM.

Temperature index models

_images/intro_fig_timodels.png

Figure: Mass balance from in-situ measurements (blue) and mass balance modelled using OGGM’s temperature index model (orange).

This notebook provides a general overview of temperature index melt models and an example implementation in OGGM. To open the notebook in your browser, click the button below.

badge_edu_notebooks

Among others, temperature index models are used to model glacier mass balance. The idea is to assume an empirical relationship between positive temperatures and melt rates.

Accumulation, ablation and glacier mass balance

_images/intro_acc_abl.png

Figure: Schematic representation of glacier mass balance as the sum of accumulation and ablation.

This notebook provides a general overview of accumulation and ablation processes and how they determine glacier mass balance and ice flow. To open the notebook in your browser, click the button below.

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Glacier advance and retreat

_images/intro_advance_retreat.png

Figure: Glacier advance (retreat) as a result of a decrease (increase) in the equilibrium line altitude.

This notebook explains the concept of the equilibrium line altitude (ELA) and simulates glacier advance and retreat in response to a change in the ELA. To open the notebook in your browser, click the button below.

badge_edu_notebooks

Glaciers as water resources

_images/intro_glacier_water_volume_seasonality.png

Figure: Annual cycle of glacier water volume change during the glacier retreat phase (blue) and in equilibrium state (orange).

This notebook simulates the evolution of real world glaciers using different climate scenarios to explain their influence on water availability in a catchment. To open the notebook in your browser, click the button below.

badge_edu_notebooks

OGGM tutorials

These are more advanced notebooks, for users of the OGGM model.

How to use OGGM

If you plan to use the OGGM model for your research, we’ve prepared several tutorials for you: have a look at oggm.org/tutorials

To try them on Binder (free, temporary environments, no registration required), follow this link:

badge_tutorial_notebooks

For instructors and teachers

Thanks for considering OGGM-Edu for your classes! We’ve gathered some recommendations and guidelines here.

Why OGGM-Edu?

OGGM-Edu was created as an educational branch of the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) project. It is now largely independent and, we hope, can become a useful educational website as we engage more content creators and users! Here is what motivates us:

  • OGGM-Edu offers “hands-on” and practical activities, but only very little textbook content: we see the platform as an interactive complement to existing online resources.

  • Therefore, OGGM-Edu does not attempt to be a “one stop shop” for all things related to glaciers: our target groups are instructors and independent learners.

  • The main themes we are currently working on are the use of glacier models to learn about glaciers and climate change, with a focus on global issues (see-level rise, water availability, regional and global climate change): these topics have grown out of our own research interests and expertises, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. We are open for new ideas as well!

  • We rely on an open-source, decentralized and collaborative content creation system:

    • open-source: everything is available on our online repositories, with an open license allowing nonrestrictive reuse.

    • decentralized: content using OGGM-Edu or that can be run on OGGM-Edu does not have to be stored on our repositories. For example, out own notebooks are stored in a separate repository, and so are Lizz’ notebooks.

    • collaborative: thanks to the decentralized open-source model, any new modification and innovation can feed back into the original website, if the author of the new content chose a license allowing it (which we strongly encourage!).

  • We use tools familiar to scientists, not web developers: our apps and notebooks are written in the Python programming language, this website is written in the rst format. These tools are much easier to learn and adopt for scientists than, css, javascript or html for example. That way, we hope to engage more people to use and develop the website further.

If you want to know more, you can watch our recent seminar presentation explaining these points into more detail and demonstrating some of OGGM-Edu’s applications:

OGGM-Edu: an interactive platform to learn and teach about glaciers on Vimeo

The slides are available here (online version) or here (pdf) .

OGGM-Edu in classes and workshops

OGGM-Edu can readily be used in your classes and workshops - we encourage you to try it out! Depending on your own knowledge about glaciers, this can require some preparation. Check out Other educational resources if you are interested in the fundamentals and online textbook materials.

Currently, we are working on making OGGM-Edu suitable for classes at the high school level (using the web applications) and at the university level (using the programmable notebooks). You will find some help to get you started below.

Using the OGGM-Edu web apps at the high school level

OGGM-Edu can be used to organize a 2 to 4 hours class, possibly even longer. It could be organized as such:

  1. General introduction to glaciers: what is a glacier, where do we find them, why are they important?

  2. Learn about different glacier types in the Glacier Gallery.

  3. Learn about the glaciers location and their climate with the World Glaciers Explorer app. Use the sample questions to encourage the students to explore the app by themselves or in small groups.

  4. For more advanced classes, learn about glacier flow with the Glacier Simulator. This app can be used for a number of different experiments, and can be complemented with a glacier goo experiment.

Using the OGGM-Edu notebooks at the university level

We use notebooks frequently for our own lectures, and we are big fans! They allow to convey knowledge in interactive, “try as you learn” practicals, and they encourage active learning.

Here are a few recommendations based on our own experience:

Spend at least two hours explaining the notebook and jupyterlab environments. Showing their basic features first, then let the students play with a simple and short notebook. In a second session (after an hour or so), summarize the usual pitfalls:

  • recognize that notebooks are actual files (not something magical on browser)

  • acknowledge that the order of execution of cells matter

  • acknowledge that errors in cell execution are OK and can be recovered from

  • show how to restart with a fresh notebook

  • encourage the use of keyboard shortcuts (such as [shift+enter] and [ctrl+m] + key)

On MyBinder: avoid bad surprises by explaining to your class that the sessions are temporary. Show your students how to download and upload files to JupyterLab so that they feel comfortable saving their work from time to time.

Whatever your learning goals are, always plan less than that. You might find this blog and this free online book about teaching with jupyter notebooks useful as well.

If you plan to teach about programming aspects as well as about glaciology, focus on the content more than on the method. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the “fun” aspect of notebooks and the programming challenges often distract students from what they are actually doing: glaciology and climatology. We’ve seen students googling about how to change a colormap before even trying to analyse the plot they just produced.

If you have the chance to have more experienced students in the room, organize peer-mentoring in groups of 2 or 3. Students are often better in mentoring each other than we are.

Implementation

Ready to give OGGM-Edu a go? You will find more information in the pages below:

Classes based on OGGM-Edu

This page lists some known applications of OGGM-Edu in classes. You can use them “as is”, or as templates for your own classes. We would love to hear back from you: if you are creating educational resources based on OGGM-Edu, please get in touch so that we can advertise them!

At the university level
High school activity sheets

Here are examples of suggested activities developed by Josie Lino, a high school student who wrote them during a short internship with us. They have not yet been tested in class. Feel free to adapt from them, and send us your suggestions!

We don’t have examples for the Glacier Explorer app yet. Send us one! Or check out this twitter thread for some inspiration.

Use your own notebooks with OGGM-Edu

You might be interested in running your own notebooks in an OGGM-Edu environment, for example during the development phase or for a class you are giving.

Fortunately, this is very easy to do! All you need to do is to provide the notebooks you would like to run in an online git repository (e.g. GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket). For example, we have created an oggm-edu-contrib with one single notebook to get you started. See also Classes based on OGGM-Edu for existing classes making use of this system.

Ideally, we would like all OGGM-Edu related content to be bundled here on this open platform: if you feel comfortable sharing your content to others, please let us know!

On MyBinder

Using your own notebooks in an OGGM-Edu Binder environment is super easy! Once your notebooks are online, you simply have to provide the correct link to your students. The syntax is following:

https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/OGGM/binder/stable?urlpath=git-pull?repo=<PATH/TO/YOUR/REPO>

For example, a link to our contrib repository looks like:

https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/OGGM/binder/stable?urlpath=git-pull?repo=https://github.com/OGGM/oggm-edu-contrib

What is happening here? The first part of the link (up to the question mark) is telling MyBinder to use the OGGM environment we are maintaining here (we use the stable branch here). The second part of the link is using nbgitpuller to fetch the provided online repository and its content. That’s all!

This was the most basic example. If you want to use other features, like using the Jupyter Lab interface (instead of the simple notebooks interface), and if you want to start at an arbitrary location in the repository (for example within a folder), the syntax is:

https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/OGGM/binder/stable?urlpath=git-pull?repo=<PATH/TO/YOUR/REPO>%26amp%3Bbranch=master%26amp%3Burlpath=lab/tree/<YOUR_REPO_NAME>/<PATH/TO/FILE>%3Fautodecode

For example, we start the OGGM-Edu tutorials with this link:

https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/OGGM/binder/stable?urlpath=git-pull?repo=https://github.com/OGGM/oggm-edu-notebooks%26amp%3Bbranch=master%26amp%3Burlpath=lab/tree/oggm-edu-notebooks/oggm-edu/welcome.ipynb%3Fautodecode

It’s getting quite long, I know! What’s best therefore is to hide the links behind a badge.

If you are creating educational resources based on OGGM-Edu, please get in touch so that we can advertise them!

Technical details

We provide more information about the platform’s internals for instructors and contributors. Make sure you read Introduction to interactive notebooks before going on!

The computing environments

The computing environments available via MyBinder are Docker containers, or “software capsules” that can be created, pushed and pulled online. We create these containers using a few simple configuration files specifying the software packages and python libraries we would like to used in OGGM-Edu. These configurations files are found in this repository: https://github.com/OGGM/binder

MyBinder uses repo2docker to build these environments and stores them in a hidden database. Once built, they won’t be built again unless a new change is made to the OGGM/binder repository.

We use the same principle to build images that can be used by your own JupyterHub deployment, if you have one. These images are available here and form the base of the Binder environments. Their configuration files are found in this repository: https://github.com/OGGM/r2d. We use these in OGGM-Hub.

The notebooks

The notebooks are developped collaboratively. We welcome your input and contributions! You will find the directory with all notebooks (educational and tutorials) on GitHub: https://github.com/OGGM/oggm-edu-notebooks

This website

The content of this website is written within the Sphinx framework and is hosted on ReadTheDocs.

OGGM-Hub

We also provide a dedicated OGGM JupyterLab running on our own server: OGGM-Hub. The advantages of OGGM-Hub over Binder are:

  • more resources for your students, faster launches

  • user management: you can set passwords and user names at wish

  • persistent sessions: work can be saved between sessions and log-ins (this is probably the main advantage of OGGM-Hub)

hub.oggm.org is only available to registered users (registration is free!), but it won’t work for an entire class. If you have a specific need for an OGGM-hub service (e.g. for a one-week class or a workshop), please Get in touch and we’ll try to arrange a specific set-up for you!

Other educational resources

OGGM-Edu tries to follow its goal as provider of interactive content, focusing on numerical glacier models. However, OGGM-Edu does not provide much theoretical background or lecture materials. For more information about fundamentals, check out these great online resources:

Get in touch if you’d like to add some more to this list!

Logos and colors

The OGGM-Edu logos are free to use. They were realized by Anne Maussion, Atelier les Gros yeux.

Color specifications

_images/oggm_edu_colors.jpg

Contribute to OGGM-Edu

As of January 2021, the OGGM-Edu platform features:

  • 4 interactive web apps

  • 8 jupyter notebooks templates in various complexity levels

  • a series of glacier graphics

  • bits of documentation for teachers about how to use the notebooks and MyBinder

We are proud of simple things, such as the the use of OGGM-Edu for a class in Peru (blog post), or the positive feedback about the web applications and the use of MyBinder as a viable platform to run workshops and tutorials online.

This is great! But we also see that there is room for improvement, and we would like to use this page to keep track of our goals for the years to come. OGGM-Edu is meant to be a collaborative platform, and we welcome any kind of contribution, from a typo correction to a new fully fledged web app!

If you want to participate, here are some pointers to get you started. Thanks so much for your help!

Help with typos, text, content, etc.

Everything on this website is written by volunteers and non-native english speakers. If you find mistakes or things you’d like to change, please do! You can edit each file by following the “suggest edit” button at the top of each page, or send us your modification suggestions per mail!

If you want to build the OGGM-Edu website locally to see your changes before publishing them online, see these instructions.

Create new content

We welcome any new idea you may have: a new graphic, a new notebook, a new app… You can decide to have it hosted here at edu.oggm.org (reach out!), or you can decide to have it in your own namespace! Follow these instructions if you’d rather do the latter.

Prepare activity sheets for schools

Let’s face it: right now, OGGM-Edu is of limited use for teachers, who have only little time to prepare their class. It would be very useful to prepare concrete “activity sheets” which explain how to spend one, two, or four hours with OGGM-Edu, at various levels of difficulty and level of detail. Such documents could also live on the website (e.g. in Classes based on OGGM-Edu) and be updated as people report their experiences with the tool.

Help translate OGGM-Edu

We are seeking to improve the usefulness of OGGM-Edu in non english speaking groups. It is technically easy to do (we already have template - dummy - pages for german, french and spanish and we can easily add any other language): the hard part is to actually translate the content and keep the translations up to date ;-).

The translation files are located in the docs/locale folder: these .po files are like a dictionary that can be edited with a simple text editor or dedicated tools (e.g. poedit). See this file for an example.

If you would like to help, grab these files and translate where you can! The translation of even one single page would be very useful. We can provide support and advice with the languages we can read (spanish, french, german).

If you want to build the OGGM-Edu website locally to see your changes before publishing them online, see these instructions.

Refactoring of the oggm-edu python package

This is probably the most involved change.

As it is now, oggm-edu relies mostly on the models and syntax provided by the core OGGM. They provides the functionality we need, but at the same time the OGGM numerical models have several issues in the educational context:

  • their functionality is tailored for modelers, not students. I.e. certain variables are not available and/or hidden, the syntax is clumsy, optimisations in code make it less readable

  • it is very difficult to change things in OGGM itself because of backwards compatibility

  • it is complex for new users to find the information in the cluttered OGGM namespace

For these reasons, we suggest to redesign and refactor the OGGM objects in a more user-friendly, intuitive oggm-edu namespace.

This will require some thinking, but in short: we should think about (1) how to name things (very hard) and (2) how do we want the new objects to behave.

The vision is that people have a one stop shop (the OGGM-Edu documentation) to learn about the flowline models and what they can do with them, without having to struggle with OGGM itself. The models will be more expressive, use rich output in the notebooks, with the goal to make using the models more fun, intuitive and quantitative.

Website design

(less important)

ReadTheDocs and Sphinx are great, but they have their limits. If you have web skills and would like to make OGGM-Edu more appealing, reach out!.

Get in touch

Interested in OGGM-Edu? We would love to hear from you!

  • All of this website and notebooks are located on GitHub.

  • Report bugs or share your ideas on the issue tracker.

  • Improve the website by submitting a pull request.

  • Follow us on Twitter.

  • Or you can always send us an e-mail the good old way.

Acknowledgements

OGGM-Edu is an affiliated project of the larger OGGM consortium (oggm.org). It is mainly the work of volunteers, but we also had support from various sources:

  • the University of Innsbruck, Förderkreis 1669Wissen schafft Gesell schaft (2019-2020).

  • the German BMBF (project FKZ 01LS1602A, 2017-2019).

  • Google Cloud | Data Solutions for Change who provided cloud computing and hosting credits (2019-2020).

  • the University of Innsbruck, department of Digital Sciences (Neue Medien Projekte, 2018).

  • the OGGM e.V. organisation, who supported the creation of the OGGM-Edu logo and of the glacier graphics.

Image missing Image missing Image missing Image missing Jupyter logo MyBinder logo

We rely on awesome open source tools to run OGGM-Edu! Most notably:

Last but not least: thanks to all OGGM-Edu friends and contributors! For a full list, see our github repository.