Snowball Earth Theory

Simulation of a simple climate model that computes the average temperature in relation to the latitude with some graphs for visualization.

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Inspiration

We picked this idea from the project ideas of the hackathon.

What it does

Our application is a simulation of a simple climate model. It computes the average temperature in relation to the latitude with some graphs for visualization.

How we built it

We were in a team of 4 : two programmers and two math/physics guys.

Math/physics side: To make this climate model, we first had to scale the amount of sunlight received by each latitude. After, we had to consider that earth's albedo rises when covered in snow/ice, therefore, if the average temperature of a latitude drops down below -10 C, albedo raises. Finally, we took into account those two constants : the opposite factor and the greenhouse effect.

Programming side: Basically, the application is iteration based, so we can control how many years have passed since the beginning of the simulation. Depending on how many years have passed, we compute the change of temperature using the Earth.py class which stand for an abstraction of all those complicated math/physics guys formulas. After, we put those temperature in some matplotlib graphs for visualization

Challenges we ran into

Understanding physics behind all those climate interactions and figuring out that we had to numerically solve second degree differential equation

What we learned

Math/physics side: Learning the physics aspect of all those climate equations.

Programming side: We never used python or any of the technology we used before, so it was a completely new environment for both of us.

What's next for Snowball Earth Theory

The image visualization of the temperature per latitude didn't work as expected, but we didn't had enough time to correct it, so maybe in the future

References

Energy Balance Model

Intransitive Model of the Earth-Atmosphere-Ocean System

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