Visualizing the Greenland Ice Sheet in VR using Immersive Fence Diagrams

Abstract

The melting of the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica are primary drivers of sea level rise. Predicting the rate of ice loss depends on modeling the ice dynamics. Ice penetrating radar provides the ability to capture images through the ice sheet, down to the bedrock. Historical environmental and climate perturbations cause small changes to the dielectric constant of ice, which are visually manifested as layers of varying brightness in the radar imagery. To understand how the flow of ice has progressed between neighboring image slices, glaciologists use Fence Diagrams to visualize several cross-sections at once. Here, we describe the immersive virtual reality (VR) fence diagrams we have developed. The goal of our system is to enable glaciologists to make sense of these data and thereby predict future ice loss.