Gregory Tucker at CIRES, CSDMS, and Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Introduction
This lab uses a simple 1D numerical model to illustrate how a valley glacier grows and reaches equilibrium. Students can experiment by changing the Equilibrium Line Altitude, accumulation rate coefficient, valley slope, and other parameters.
Classroom organization Lab is designed for undergraduate students majoring in earth sciences (hydrology, environmental sciences, glaciology, atmosphere and ocean sciences). The notebook is demonstration style and gives participants the possibility to explore interactively.
Learning objectives Skills
basic plotting with the Python matplotlib library
Key concepts
equilibrium line altitude (ELA)
"thin ice" approximation
mass balance in a glacier
Lab notes
Can be used as part of a paper or problem set on glacier behavior.
This lab can be run on either the lab (for educators) or jupyter (for general use) instance of the OpenEarthscape JupyterHub: just click one of the links under the Run online using heading at the top of this page, then run the notebook in the "CSDMS" kernel.
