Ice, Ice Baby
Contributed by Wanda Wang. She is currently in the NYC Data Science Academy 12 week full time Data Science Bootcamp program taking place between April 11th to July 1st, 2016. This post is based on her second class project - R Shiny (due on the 4th week of the program).
Introduction
As the world's air conditioning unit, Glaciers keep our temperatures in check; they are the harbinger of climate change. To visualize the locations of our glaciers, and their dangerous negative progression, we will utilize a Shiny application to further explore this glaciological picture.
The Datasets
Data was retrieved from the World Glacier Monitoring Service(WGMS) and the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space(GLIMS). The GLIMS glacier database generously provided the geographic outlines of around 200, 000 unique glaciers. An active scientific collaboration network currently compiles the annual mass balance data for WGMS.
Analysis
The expansive reach of glaciers on our planet is simply astounding. Here, we can visualize their specific geographic locations and name information by using Leaflet as a coordinate-friendly tool:
Indicatively, glacier mass balances are highly sensitive to climate change, in the past and in the present. Mass balance is the difference between accumulation and ablation of a glacier. Various glaciers can be examined through selection the name dropdown in the Map tab of the Shiny application.
To examine the mass balance depletion over time, we can access an animation over time, representing the negative change, on a colored scale.
As an example, for the Freya Glacier located in Northeast Greenland, we can compare 2008 vs. 2014:
The lighter color in 2014 represents the mass depletion over time. A perspective of urgency is meant to visually alarm.
To access the numerical mass balance measurements - the Time Series tab of the Shiny app allows the visualization of the negative trend over time for the desired location:
Conclusion
Variables including temperature and sea levels will be included in the following update for this project. Additional glacier characteristics (elevation point, altitude, shape) will also be further examined.
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