Winds Through Time: Ice Age Impacts on Climate by University of Colorado at Boulder

Winds Through Time: Ice Age Impacts on Climate is an interactive exhibit at the Mesa Lab that allows visitors to see changes in wind and climate based on real-time changes in topography through the positioning of blocks that represent ice sheets and mountains. The patterns in the wind flow indicate the paths along which storms develop and where precipitation occurs over timescales of decades, centuries, and longer. The locations of the ice sheets or mountains have visible impacts on climate.

Visitors move three types of custom-designed blocks representing ice sheets, tall mountains, and low mountains across a map of North America to recreate the ice sheet that once covered the continent. As the visitor moves these blocks, a sensor observes the changes and shifts the general direction of the wind blowing from the Pacific Ocean across North America. A projector then displays the wind displacement in response to the visitor’s actions.

The exhibit team designed and constructed the blocks for the mountains and ice sheets using gridded global climate model output as inspiration. A depth camera reads the table top and sends a real-time depth image to the simulation which generates moving particles that represent wind movement.