The simulator shows how a single glacial lake basin builds up its layered floor year after year, illustrating how the spring meltwater pulse deposits a coarse light layer, how winter stillness deposits a thin dark layer, and how varying yearly conditions, warmer or colder, wetter or drier, change the resulting thickness of each layer, producing a visible climate record you can read directly from the stacked sediment.
Adjust the yearly climate conditions to control how much meltwater and sediment enters the lake each spring, then step or run forward through simulated years to watch the sediment core build up layer by layer. Compare varve thickness across different simulated years to see how warmer years produce thicker coarse layers, then use the core viewer to count and inspect individual annual pairs the way a real geologist would.
Sliders for meltwater volume, sediment supply, and winter length control yearly varve formation; a time-step or run control advances the simulation year by year; a core inspector view lets you zoom into the layered sediment stack to count and measure individual light-dark varve pairs.
Some Scandinavian varve chronologies, first pieced together starting with Gerard De Geer over a century ago, now span more than thirteen thousand consecutive years counted layer by layer, offering a year-by-year record of the end of the last Ice Age with a precision that predates and independently supports radiocarbon dating.
The simulator shows how a single glacial lake basin builds up its layered floor year after year, illustrating how the spring meltwater pulse deposits a coarse light layer, how winter stillness deposits a thin dark layer, and how varying yearly conditions, warmer or colder, wetter or drier, change the resulting thickness of each layer, producing a visible climate record you can read directly from the stacked sediment.
The simulator shows how a single glacial lake basin builds up its layered floor year after year, illustrating how the spring meltwater pulse deposits a coarse light layer, how winter stillness deposits a thin dark layer, and how varying yearly conditions, warmer or colder, wetter or drier, change the resulting thickness of each layer, producing a visible climate record you can read directly from the stacked sediment.
Adjust the yearly climate conditions to control how much meltwater and sediment enters the lake each spring, then step or run forward through simulated years to watch the sediment core build up layer by layer. Compare varve thickness across different simulated years to see how warmer years produce thicker coarse layers, then use the core viewer to count and inspect individual annual pairs the way a real geologist would.
Some Scandinavian varve chronologies, first pieced together starting with Gerard De Geer over a century ago, now span more than thirteen thousand consecutive years counted layer by layer, offering a year-by-year record of the end of the last Ice Age with a precision that predates and independently supports radiocarbon dating.