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.

1. A SONG
OF OUR
WARMING
PLANET Using music to communicate
critical concepts in climate science
Sco! St. George
Daniel Crawford
Todd Reubold
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting | Connecting Geoscience with the Arts | December 15, 2014

2. GEOG1403
BIOGEOGRAPHY OF THE GLOBAL
GARDEN

3. CCLHIAMNAGTEE

5. Global temperature records are commonly represented as time series.
°F
1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
59
58.5
58
57.5
57
56.5
56
Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

6. “ ”
If you really want to
communicate with
someone, it’s best
not to show a graph,
but to express
something artistically.
Commander Chris Hadfield
November 12, 2014

7. Daniel Crawford University of Minnesota

15. However, sometimes converting a simple graph
into some different form of information can
deliver the message far be!er, and more
effectively, than dots on a page. “ ”
Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy
July 18, 2013

16. GEOG1403
BIOGEOGRAPHY OF THE GLOBAL
GARDEN

18. Parts of the planet have warmed more rapidly than others since the 1880s.
°C Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

20. violin I
violin II
viola
cello

21. Planetary Bands, Warming World
Daniel Crawford

22. Any geophysical time series can be expressed as music.
°F
1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
59
58.5
58
57.5
57
56.5
56
Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

23. How could anything
be more scientific
and mathematical
than music? “ ”
Commander Chris Hadfield
November 12, 2014