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The sonification of marine heatwaves

18 May 2024

“Sonification’ is a term to describe the musical representation of data, and here, we share a sonification using projected model data of the future of the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area’s marine environment, created by our Dr Lee de Mora.

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.

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

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.

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