A Song of Our Warming Planet: Using Music to Communicate Critical Concepts in Climate Science

Abstract:

When climate science is communicated to the broader public, many of its key findings are shared in the form of conceptual diagrams or information-dense data graphics. In this collaboration, we applied a data sonification approach to express NASA’s global temperature record as a musical composition for the cello. The resulting piece, which we titled ‘A Song of Our Warming Planet’, transformed 133 years of annual global temperature anomalies into a haunting, atonal melody that stretched across almost all of the instrument’s range. Since its release in June 2013, the song has been featured by several national and international media outlets, including the New York Times, the Weather Channel, and National Public Radio, and its accompanying video has received more than 140,000 views from nearly every corner of the world. We are currently preparing a new composition for string quartet that will add a geographic dimension to describe both the pace and place of global warming. We believe the success of our initial sonification project is testament to the power of music to reach audiences who respond less enthusiastically to traditional methods used to communicate climate science. We also imagine this approach could be applied more broadly to allow students to create novel, visceral, and memorable encounters with other aspects of the geophysical sciences.