Do you see south Florida in our Digital Wave island? Students have teamed up in groups to represent different regions of south Florida, which you can see outlined by 5 plots of land. We have: the Kissimmee River and the upper lakes… Lake Okeechobee, Farmlands, and Water Conservation Areas… Coasts and Estuaries… the Everglades… and Urban Areas. Groups will work together to research their region, how water flows through it, and how the region and water sources may be affected by climate change. Another twist? The groups have to work with each other, because water in one region doesn’t stay in that region, it flows from one region to the other. Stay tuned for more progress!

When a NASA scientist meets high school students, you may automatically think that it is always the NASA scientist that would be teaching the students. But at the Museum’s Digital WAVE: Warming Winds and Water program, the scientist taught the students, AND the students taught the scientist. At Digital WAVE’s virtual speaker event of Fall 2011, Dr. Mike Gunson from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California met with Digital WAVE students in Miami to talk about climate change. The event took place in the virtual world of Second Life, and everyone communicated through his or her avatars. Dr. Gunson is an atmospheric scientist and works on the OCO (Orbiting Carbon Observatory) satellite that will map carbon dioxide from space and will “watch the Earth breathe.”

Dr. Gunson speaks to students around the Digital WAVE campfire.

Dr. Gunson talked about how carbon dioxide was “the missing link between soft drinks, forests, ocean acidity, wild fires, cement production, and volcanoes” and how records and observations from ice cores and satellites show how carbon dioxide levels have increased, and how humans have contributed to the problem.

Dr. Gunson explains The Keeling Curve, which shows direct observations of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958.

Then… students had the opportunity to show Dr. Gunson what they had been working on in virtual worlds. Their avatars led Dr. Gunson’s avatar to where the students are building 3D objects as part of their projects to create virtual climate change exhibits. Getting feedback from a NASA scientist is pretty special. And getting his attention so much so that he asked for an invitation to come back to see their final projects – that’s saying something.

The beginnings of the students' virtual exhibit projects on climate change. See the glaciers?

There are times when you’re impressed, and times when you’re really impressed. Seeing the completed student productions at the Digital Wave Family Event was one of those times you had to be really impressed. During the 2-week Digital Wave Summer Academy, high school students learned about climate change while also gaining 3D design skills. Students formed groups, and each group chose a topic – groups chose everything from deforestation and sea level rise to carbon emissions and acid rain. After doing some individual research on their group’s topic, students went to work creating their masterpieces in the virtual world of Second Life. Their challenge was to design and build 3D virtual exhibits and animations, with the goal being to create something that would help others learn about climate change. All the projects turned out to be amazing. Check out just a couple of them that students presented to their families and Museum staff at this event. (Each image has a description of that group’s topic below the image.) And just try not to be impressed by what these students learned and created.

Before (left): A healthy forest with a big glacier nearby, and a house sitting a safe distance from the water’s edge. After (right): After deforestation by humans has destroyed the forest, all the carbon which has been stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere, accelerating the atmosphere’s warming greenhouse effect, which melts ice, raises sea levels, and affects environments and habitats.

Visitors to this theatre may sit and enjoy a short video (also created by this student group) about the effects of climate change on the Earth’s polar regions. They would learn that the Antarctic Peninsula’s temperature has risen 5.4degrees since 1950; and that by the end of the century, sea levels could rise by 3 feet. Visitors could then start a simulation on the exhibit to the right – as the ice sheets melt, the sea level rises.

What’s the connection between human industries, natural environments, and acid rain? This simulation displays a factory, illustrating how industrial activities, and the burning of fossil fuels, increase greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. This can then change the chemistry of the atmosphere, soils, forests, and oceans – acid rain and ocean acidification can in turn affect soils, vegetation, and ocean habitats.

Teen Avatars float above virtual Earth with Astronaut Melvin

We just had an amazing, inspiring talk with Astronaut Leland Melvin in Second Life. Almost 100 students from the Museum’s youth development programs participated. Here are a few shots from in-world… Video clips are coming soon.

We truly appreciate the time and dedication that Astronaut Melvin put into this event and look forward to hearing from him again in the future.

Take-away message: “You CAN do it!”

So how is it that we know about past climate on the Earth? Nowadays we have satellites that monitor patterns and conditions in the land, atmosphere, oceans, and polar regions. But what about before satellites? Today we learned that scientists study ice and sediment cores to learn about past climates. Basically, each year ice and sediment settle into layers. If you drill down deeper and deeper into ice or sediment, each layer tells us what the climate was like further and further back in time. In that way, ice and sediment cores are kind of like a time machine! Today Bryan Mark from the Byrd Polar Research Center at the Ohio State University talked to us virtually through Second Life. (So really it was his avatar talking to all of our student avatars.) He talked to us about his research in paleoclimatology (an official way of saying he studies Earth’s long-term climate record), and his research in the connection between glaciers, climate and Earth’s water resources. Dr. Mark actually goes to Peru to study tropical glaciers in the Andes Mountains!

 We also got to make models of time machines (aka sediment cores). Using everyday stuff like gravel, dirt, ice, and clear plastic tubing, we actually mixed up the materials in three different combinations, and deposited them so they made three distinct layers. These layers represented three different conditions: an ice sheet (ice over solid land), an ice shelf (ice floating on water), and the open ocean. In real sediment cores, when scientists see indications of these conditions, in this order, it shows that the climate was warming up over that time period. How amazing that we can “tell time” by rocks and ice! That is exactly what climate scientists like Dr. Mark are doing.