Story
The sonification of marine heatwaves
18 May 2024
Above: Black triggerfish swimming around Boatswain Bird Island near Ascension Island. The seas around the remote Ascension Island, situated in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, have been protected from fishing and deep-sea mining since 2019 and it is the 8th largest marine protected area (MPA) in the ocean. Despite efforts to safeguard this marine area, computer models forecast a worrying future for the area if the rate of climate change continues, even in low emission scenarios. Listen now: Marine Heat Waves - a sonification of ocean model data
Dr Lee de Mora, Marine Systems Modeller at PML, used real marine simulations from the Mission Atlantic project and his recent study ‘Impacts of climate change on the Ascension Island marine protected area and its ecosystem services’ to create the sonification. He commented on the work to produce the music:
“In Marine Heat Waves, four datasets from the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area (AIMPA) are represented as music. These are:
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Sea surface temperature relative to the mean of the years 1976-1985 is shown in red, and performed by the piano and shown in red.
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Ocean acidity, pH, is shown as a blue line and is performed by a higher pitched synthesizer with a long note duration.
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Phytoplankton biomass concentration is shown in green and is performed by a gritty bass synthesizer.
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Zooplankton biomass concentration is shown in purple and is performed by an analogue mid-range synthesizer with a short note duration.”
He adds:
“The value of the data is linked with musical pitch. This means that, for instance, if the temperature rises, the piano pitch gets higher. The musical note, the original data, and the climatology of 1976-1985 are visualised on the left side of the video. On the right-hand side of the video, the globe shows the sea surface temperature in a purple-yellow colour scale or the temperature anomaly against 1976-1985 in a blue-red colour scale. The AIMPA is always shown on the globe as a white circle on the map.”
“A marine heatwave is a period of abnormally high ocean temperature compared to the typical seasonal temperature. On the globe, the onset of the marine heatwave is represented by a circle rippling outward from the AIMPA. In the audio, the piano note becomes distorted at the onset of a heatwave, with distortion linked to the heatwave intensity.”
“Ascension Island is a small remote island in the Equatorial Atlantic, which is inhabited by a significant diversity of marine life, including sharks, rays, cetaceans, turtles, and sea birds. The waters around the Ascension Island were protected from commercial fishing in 2019. However, the island is still vulnerable to external impacts of the changing climate, notably the impact of warming oceans and ocean acidification.”
“This piece highlights Ascension Island MPA’s exposure to heatwaves, ocean acidification and their subsequent impacts on the marine ecosystem. Over the coming century, our model projects that the ocean will become warmer, more acidic, with less phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass. These changes will significantly negatively impact the rest of the ecosystem, as well as the AIMPA’s capacity to provide ecosystem services, such as tourism, sequester carbon, or maintaining biodiversity.”
“Science and art are often presented in the media as though they are in opposition, but science and art are great partners. Through provoking an emotional response, art can make scientific results and data more visceral, tangible, and memorable. Art can allow research to become more visible, more engaging, allowing it to travel much further and reach new audiences.”
For more information about the Impacts of Climate Change on the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area and its Ecosystem Services, please see our publication in JGR-Biogeosciences: ‘Impacts of climate change on the Ascension Island marine protected area and its ecosystem services’.
de Mora, L., Galli, G., Artioli, Y., Broszeit, S., Garrard, S. L., Baum, D., et al. (2024). Impacts of climate change on the Ascension Island marine protected area and its ecosystem services. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 129, e2023JG007395. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JG007395
For more information about marine-themed Art-Science collaborations, please check out this recording of the PML seminar Plymouth Marine ... Art? Exploring PML's Long History of Art-Science Collaborations: https://youtu.be/QtDDXqG1tYE
Related information
For more information about how scenario choice impacts carbon allocation projection at global warming levels, please see our publication in Earth System Dynamics: de Mora, L., Swaminathan, R., Allan, R. P., Blackford, J. C., Kelley, D. I., Harris, P., Jones, C. D., Jones, C. G., Liddicoat, S., Parker, R. J., Quaife, T., Walton, J., and Yool, A.: Scenario choice impacts carbon allocation projection at global warming levels, Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 1295–1315, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1295-2023, 2023.
For more information about the process of musification of Earth System Models, please see our publication in Geoscience Communications: de Mora, L., Sellar, A. A., Yool, A., Palmieri, J., Smith, R. S., Kuhlbrodt, T., Parker, R. J., Walton, J., Blackford, J. C., and Jones, C. G.: Earth system music: music generated from the United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1), Geosci. Commun., 3, 263–278, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-263-2020, 2020.
This piece uses the NEMO-ERSEM model, generated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory scientists as part of the Mission Atlantic project, and is built around the CMIP6 Ascension Island future projection from the CRACAB project, which was part of the Darwin Initiative. The musification tools and methods were developed for the UKESM’s Earth System Music project.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 862428 (MISSION ATLANTIC). This output reflects only the author’s view and the Research Executive Agency (REA) cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. This project has received funding from the UK Government through the UK Biodiversity Challenge Fund Darwin Initiative under grant agreement DPLUS113 (CRACAB- Climate Resilience and Conservation of Ascension's Biodiversity). This project has received funding from the UK Government through the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council projects TerraFIRMA (NE/W004895/1) and UKESM (NE/N017951/1, NE/N018036/1).
The video was generated in python using Matplotlib and Cartopy. The source code for the video is available here: https://github.com/ledm/MarineHeatwaves
The source code for the audio MIDI generation is available here: https://github.com/ledm/earthsystemmusic2
This piece is also available on spotify, apple music, amazon music and other music streamers.