Seminar May, 8th 2024
“Vanishing glaciers in a changing climate”
Responsible lecturers: Guglielmina Diolaiuti and Antonella Senese
We addressed the issue of climate change and its effects starting from the evidence. In fact, glaciers, as dominant features of high mountain landscapes, are sites of easily observable consequences of climate change, even if caused by distant carbon emissions. We took a virtual journey among glaciers around the world thanks to impressive photographic comparisons that show how much the glaciers have shrunk, but above all by setting foot on one of the glaciers symbol of Italian Alps (the Forni Glacier, Stelvio National Park, Italy) thanks to an innovative application of virtual tools for education and outreach activities developed by Milan University UNIMI: an immersive experience to visit an alpine glacier by means of 360° contents. The high resolution of videos from the proposed virtual visit brings the glacier really close to viewers and it conveys the illusion of a real field excursion. In order to increase the fruition of this innovative experience, we make the multimedia products usable everywhere via smartphone or tablet or by means of VR (Virtual Reality) headsets. In addition, we recognized the differences among the various types of “ice”, from the north pole to the southern Antarctica to mountain glaciers, focusing on the different impact due to the melting of these diverse ice types. Once we understood the current impacts, we looked at future projections of climate change and tried to understand the limitations of predictive models. At the end of this second seminar, we also looked at how to communicate the causes and effects of climate change, analyzing different communication strategies.
