Glacier MRI - Explore the Juneau Icefield by USGS Vizlab

Glaciers store valuable freshwater that is essential for the public and agriculture. When glaciers melt, this freshwater is lost to the ocean, leading to sea level rise. Glaciers are melting due to rising temperatures, changes in atmospheric circulation, and deposition of dark aerosols on ice. Dark aerosols decrease the amount of light that is reflected by the glacier, causing the surface to absorb more heat. Black carbon is a type of dark aerosol that is produced by both industrial burning of fossil fuels and forest wildfires.

The Juneau Icefield, located just north of Juneau, AK, includes some of the mostly rapidly melting glaciers on Earth (Davies et al., 2024 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49269-y). Black carbon deposition on the icefield is contributing to increased rates of glacier melt (Nagorski et al., 2019 https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD029411). To determine the type of aerosols deposited on the glaciers and their origins, the Fire in Ice Project collected a series of ~10-meter snow cores across the Juneau Icefield.

This interactive data visualization allows the user to “MRI scan” the Juneau Icefield to uncover what lies beneath the surface. By scanning the landscape, users can explore the mountainous topography of the Juneau Icefield, with glaciers that are nearly 1-kilometer thick. The user can also hover over drill and camera icons to see where USGS scientists drilled ~10-meter snow cores and view photographs of the Juneau Icefield and scientists collecting samples. In addition to the interactive visualization, the webpage details the equipment used to drill the ice cores. The visualization is part of a gallery website that also features data visualizations of wildfire markers in collected snow cores and atmospheric modeling showing the origin of deposited wildfire aerosols.

Data are available from https://doi.org/10.5066/P9DNAN1M and the code behind the visualizations is available from https://github.com/DOI-USGS/earth-in-flux/tree/main/fireInIce.