On International Earth Day, the After Ice app shows how fast the water is rising as a result of climate change.
Earth Day
The rise in sea level is already causing problems and disasters in various places around the world. But providing insight into the world is still to come, will not succeed. The artist Justin Brice Guariglia and developer Strange Flavor try to make it transparent with their After Ice app.
The app was released on Earth Day and works with your location and the camera of your iPhone. Based on data from NASA, After Ice shows different scenarios of what will happen if the ice continues to melt worldwide and the seas rise.
After Ice
The app does this in three ways. Total Melt shows how high the water will rise when a significant percentage of all ice melts worldwide. According to the makers, this is a scenario that is still very far away from us. The second function in the app comes a lot closer and shows how high the water will be in the 2080s if nothing changes. Those are the years that children of today will experience and the chance of wet feet is high. Finally, the app also shows New York in the 2080s. Wall Street is then under water.
The app lets you take photos of the results at your location, which you can share on social media. The app does this with a water filter, which makes it look like your cup is going under. In this way the makers hope to create more awareness about climate change. It is a pity that the app does not show results in meters but in ‘feet’. One foot is approximately 0.3 meters.
To make aware
During the creation of the app, Guariglia spoke with various climate scientists and went on a number of missions with NASA to view the Greenland ice sheets. “I see this app as a way to visualize what is happening to the Earth,” he says. “It’s going too slow for us to realize it. We can see that the ice is melting, but we have so little bond with it that we do not understand the consequences. I’m trying to make it more urgent. We need to feel it emotionally before taking action. Hopefully After Ice will at least start a conversation. ”