Cryosphere and sea level rise : A numerical interactive educational activity

Expedition Sea Level - a time travel to unveil the mysteries of sea level rise : becoming an actor of climate change is a numerical interactive activity designed as a game for middle school students (11 - 15 years old) to learn the links between sea level rise, the melt of glaciers and ice sheets, and human activities. This includes various notions to help them understand why sea level changes, how ice sheets and glaciers evolve and are studied, the ideas of uncertain futures, mitigation and adaptation.

This activity is to be discovered in group or alone, in class or in scientific facilities when classes come to visit and encounter the actors and actresses of science. Another of its goal is to create discussions and debates among students on various subjects regarding climate change but also to help them understand the scientific processes behind the different changes happening or incoming, in order to fight increasing eco-anxiety.

To do so, a fictional narrative is decomposed in three chapters with a growing immersion for the audience. The first one is a short animation staging a young Maldivian girl in 2081, going to see her grandparents whom house is partially underwater. The second one is designed as a first person shooter game where the public plays a glaciologist at Dumont d’Urville and on the Astrolabe glacier, answering pedagogical quizzes and learning through mini games. And the last one is shaped as a multiple choices tree game, leading to three IPCC scenario (low, intermediary and high). The choices made by the player.s lead to one out of the three scenario in which the public needs to find the best adaptation plan to protect the grandparents from the first chapter.

Expedition Sea Level is the result of a diploma project conducted alongside the european research project PROTECT. This fully illustrated project answers the communication needs of PROTECT but also the needs of understanding and entertainment expectations of middle school students, based on an anonymous survey conducted among 71 middle school students, mainland France, from December 2021 to February 2022.