Icepenguin World Map

[Alexia Borson]

Cadenand I have been doing a lot of learning and playing around penguins. A few weeks ago I made him this little sensory small world scene to play with his little penguins from Safari Ltd . (This post contains Amazon affiliate links.) It started as a container of slushy snow and food coloring and then I added a chunk of ice from our freezer. As Caden played the ice would melt creating little puddles of water. We kept this play scene in the freezer for a couple of weeks and would pull it out whenever Caden wanted to play with it or we needed to keep him busy so we could get something done.

Caden has really enjoyed playing with this icy penguin small world. Just the other day I overheard a penguin conversation between a mommy penguin and baby penguin after being reunited. It was so cute!

While Caden played with his ice and penguins, I read him Penguins! by National Geographic Kids. It is full of interesting facts about penguins and great photographs! We have also read The Little Penguin by A.J. Wood and a few different Tacky the Penguin books by Helen Lester.

Prior to 2003, the retail ice industry was frozen in place, inefficiently distributing a hard and chunky bagged product that was touched by too many hands. Consumers had to break up the ice, usually by dropping the bags in store parking lots. IHA revolutionized the industry in 2003 by combining superior manufacturing, advanced engineering, and innovative technology to provide high quality ice direct to consumers at wholesale pricing. It was a trifecta for consumers: better quality, lower price, and greater convenience. The retail ice industry was forever changed.

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FREEDOM. The smartest thing about SMARTICE is this: It gives you the freedom to focus on things you love, while your ice & water vending machine provides the income. Perfect for the entrepreneur that is short on time or would like to maintain their day job while being a business owner at the same time.

Chilly the penguin is a titano-penguin - named Chilly in honour of the Chilean Antarctic Program. The titano penguin is the biggest dinosaur penguin ever found, a number have been found across Patagonia.

Erebus the leopard seal is named after one of the ships, HMS Erebus, used in the expedition of James Clark Ross to Antarctica in 1839-1843. In Greek mythology, Erebus is a deity - the god of darkness - so best to steer clear of him! The other ship was called HMS Terror - can you find the character "Terror" in the game....?

The game is based on a simple ice sheet model which represents the way in which ice flows, and how that flow is altered by changes in the surrounding environment. Computer-based ice sheet simulation models are used by scientists to both understand how the ice behaves and to make projections for future behaviour.

If the height and length of the ice sheet were representative of the real ice sheet, you would need to line up a few hundred phones in order to see the whole ice sheet. Hence, the ice sheet has been stretched in height in comparison to its length. Each profile represents about 1500 kilometres in length, and about 4000 metres in height.

Ice sheets build up over long periods of time, as snow falls and is compacted under the weight of snow falling on top. The compacted snow becomes ice and begins to flow. We can see the layers of ice building up in data from radar measurements. The deformation of these layers can tell us a lot about the ice sheet's behaviour.

Ice sheets grow on land and flow towards their coastal margins. If they are thick enough, the ice can ground in the water. An ice sheet whose base is above sea level is a terrestrial ice sheet; one with its base below sea level (still in contact with the bedrock) is called a marine ice sheet. A marine ice sheet is susceptible to changes in the ocean temperature as well as changes in air temperature. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a mainly marine ice sheet, so is very vulnerable to small changes in ocean temperature.

Ice streams are like giant rivers of ice. Like rivers, ice flow organises itself into tributaries and fast flowing main channels. The ice streams drain the majority of the ice from the ice sheet, and changes in their behaviour can have massive impacts on the whole ice sheet. They are also sometimes called outlet glaciers in Greenland, mainly where they flow in a valley between mountains.

Each level in the game represents an ice stream, or outlet glacier, which drains the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The bedrock elevations beneath each ice stream vary in depth and shape, which means each ice stream will respond differently to the same change in ocean or air temperature.

The bedrock profiles for each ice stream are a simplified representation of what is actually present beneath each ice stream. The resolution of an ice sheet model is an important consideration as small scale lumps and bumps may help to stabilise a retreating ice sheet.

Ice shelves are susceptible to changes in the ocean and the atmosphere, they have a relatively low surface elevation, so temperatures are warmer. An extreme example of the impact of climate change on ice shelves was the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. It is believed that meltwater ponds exacerbated crevassing on the ice shelf, and this led to collapse of the ice shelf, and speed up of the ice streams that flowed into the ice shelf.

An important message this game aims to get across is that melting & iceberg calving are a normal part of an ice sheet that is in steady-state. Melting & icebergs become a source of concern when the amount of ice lost is greater than that going in, and the ice sheet becomes smaller and sea level rises.

Iceberg calving is a complex process, which we are still working on representing robustly in ice sheet models. It is a triggered by lots of different factors. In the game we simply remove a block when the ice shelf reaches a critical thickness, to give the penguin or seal a spot to jump off the ice.

In the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, air temperatures are very cold, so a small amount of air temperature change will not significantly impact on the size of the ice sheet directly. It is the indirect effects that cause big changes in the ice sheet, such as changes in ocean circulation. However, in Greenland, the air temperature is much warmer and can have a big impact on the ice sheet, hence you have another control - the air temperature.

Ocean water around the planet varies in its temperature and saltiness (salinity). This changes its density, which helps cause ocean currents to form. When the water is dense it sinks, so these currents form at different levels in the ocean. Wind blowing across the surface of the ocean also helps to drive ocean currents, and changes in the wind can modify ocean currents that will impact on marine ice sheets.

At the edges of the ice sheet, and under the ice shelf, the water is very cold and fresh as it is formed from melting ice. In the deeper ocean around Antarctica there is an ocean current called Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) which flows around the continent. This water is a few degrees warmer than the melted-ice-water, so if it comes into contact with an ice shelf, it will cause much higher melting of that ice shelf. Sometimes changing weather patterns cause wind directions and speeds to change, driving the water from the deep ocean to under the ice shelf.

A major impact of a warmer climate is a change in sea ice conditions. sea ice forms a barrier between the wind and the ocean surface, damping the effect of the wind on the ocean currents. If the sea ice is reduced, the wind may have more ability to cause warmer water to flow beneath the ice shelves.

While a small increase in air temperature will not have a big impact on the interior of the ice sheet, it does affect more coastal areas at lower elevations. The Antarctic Peninsula has seen some of the biggest rates of air temperature change in recent years, which has led to many ice shelves retreating and breaking up. Most notably, the Larsen B Ice Shelf broke up in 2002 over the course of a few weeks, leading to the ice flowing into the ice shelf speeding up. It is thought that meltwater ponds which formed on the surface helped to cause such a catastrophic break up.

The full process of how climate change impacts on ice sheets is not represented in the game, it is only the result - an increase in melt rates from the warmer ocean water - which is represented. As described above, the increase in water temperatures is triggered by changes in the whole climate system.

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