High-Level Project Summary
We decided to create a super heroine named Dala whose ability is to throw cool winds and ice in order to protect and keep our melting glaciers cold. She is also an animal lover and makes sure that all the polar bears, penguins and other cold temperature animals are safe. The challenge required to personify one of Earth's abilities into a superhero form, we chose the superpower of cooling because our glaciers are melting and because of it our sea levels are rising and global warming is getting worse, we also added the skill of protecting the wildlife and keeping the species from becoming extinct. Dala would be vital to protecting our Earth and saving all of our lives in the long term.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
When we read that our challenge asked of us to imagine a superhero who could protect the Earth and personify one of its abilities we thought of many issues such as pollution, deforestation, sea contamination, etc. At the end we chose what we thought would help the most and is vital right now: global warming and the melting of our glaciers. As we all know our Earth´s temperatures are rising and because of it giant glaciers are starting to melt (with some completely melted already), provoking a potentially devastating rise in the sea levels. The skill we decided to personify in a superhero is the ability of the earth to keep low enough temperatures to maintain the ice surfaces safe.
Dala is a super heroine who number one mission is to keep our only Earth a safe place for us to live now and for our future generations. She specifically protects our ice surfaces in places such as Greenland, the Arctic and the Antarctic in which the amount of ice loss is growing each year. She is able to blow extremely cool winds in temperatures ranging from 0ºC to even -60ºC (normal range of temperatures for glaciers and ice sheets).
Dala also protects endangered animals that live in this places, like polar bear, which is facing an uncertain future due to the decreasing of sea ice in the Arctic. The ringed seal and the Adélie penguin in Antarctic are other two examples of the especies she is trying to protect from getting extinct.
Our goal with this project is to spread the knowledge and create awareness about this issues that are putting in extreme danger the only Earth we have. We would like for our super heroine, Dala, to become an icon for keeping Earth´s temperatures from rising and thus saving our ecosystems, and, in the long term, the future of humanity.
To create our idea we did a lot of online research using NASA resources and map satellites that show the decrease in the ice surfaces.
Space Agency Data
For this project we use various NASA based articles in relation to our topic. The main inspiration for creating this project was the Global Ice Viewer we obtained in climate.nasa.gov. This page consists in a global map that locates and shows the biggest glaciers, Greenland, Iceland, Arctic and Antarctic. Here you are able to observe where are they located and how they look. The map also shows the metric tons of ice that are loss per year in each different location. For example, since 1994, 400 billion tons of glaciers are loss each year and in Antarctica 127 million tons of ice are loss per year.
This data is prove that a we need to fin a solution for the damage that is being done to the ice shelves and glaciers and prevent them from continue to melt into the seas.
We added research about the animals that live in this places and depend on them to continue living. We discovered that there are various species that are in danger of going extinct because of the constant decrease of the ice.
Hackathon Journey
Our Space Apps experience was definitely not easy because we did not had a lot of time to complete this project, regardless, we united as a team and proved to ourselves that we could do it. We chose the challenge of SuperpowEARTH because we thought it seemed fun and a good way to represent what we think the planets´s biggest issues are and what it needs the most.
Our approach was first to come up with the problem we wanted to fix and make people aware of, after that we met to come up with the idea of a superhero that represented all the aspects we wanted and, at the same time, that it was appealing to the general public.
Our biggest challenge was the amount of time we had because we are all busy with other things but we made it work as a team, by working together and dividing the job it all became manageable.
We are thankful for the experience and the challenge because it helped us to research more in detail about these topics and also it taught how to organize and give our 100% percent to do the best work we could in a short amount of time.
References
Global Ice Viewer – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. (2020). Global Ice Viewer. https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/global-ice-viewer/#/3
How Animals Will Fare in a Changing Climate. (2020). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/how-animals-will-fare-in-a-changing-climate/
OneKindPlanet. (2020). Top 10 Animals Endangered by Climate Change. https://onekindplanet.org/top-10/10-adorable-animals-threatened-by-climate-change/
Tags
#creative #globalwarming #glaciers #superhero #superpower #wildlife #ice #art
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.