Winds Through Time
Winds Through Time is an interactive exhibit installed at NCAR’s Mesa Laboratory as part of its permanent display. The goal of the exhibit is to enable visitors to tangibly manipulate physical mountains and ice sheets to alter projected wind patterns, to experience how continental-scale relief affects climate. The exhibit graphics explain how the climate was vastly different during the last ice-age, and visitors are invited to recreate the arrangement of ice-sheets and mountains to see how huge ice sheets forced winds south, making the American south-west a much wetter and windier environment than we have today. The playful interface supports visitors to learn about paleoclimate and climate forces by making and doing, seeing the effects of their interactions in front of them. NCAR is a world class center of earth system science, and the Mesa Laboratory receives thousands of visitors each year. This project involved the collaboration of professors across CU Boulder, students, scientists from NOAA, and professionals from NCAR.