“I am an experimental seismologist. That means I spend a lot of time looking at data about the earth. … I am also a musician and I sometimes hear the data. This data is like a graceful minuet accelerating into a frantic jig. … I find these graphs terrifying and I struggle to understand why so many people accept this without fear.”
Dr. Lucy Jones
Dr. Jones is referring to the temperature data in the graph below, which correlates with the atmospheric CO2 data.
Global temperature anomaly according to 4 independent research groups (orange, pink, maroon, and purple lines) plotted on top of atmospheric CO2 data from ice cores (green) and direct atmospheric measurements (blue). Global temperature has been rising since around 1880, lately at a markedly accelerating rate, in correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentration. All data publicly available, downloaded and plotted by me (for details, see here).
In a newly published composition years in the making, Dr. Jones translates the actual temperature data since 1880 into a compelling musical piece in a baroque period tradition called In Nomine, in which one instrument plays a steady melody. She assigns Earth’s temperature to falling or rising notes in that melody, illustrating in song the accelerating ascension of our Earth’s temperature and its growing urgency.
Click below to watch a music video of In Nomine Terra Calens: In the name of a warming Earth.
“Dealing with climate change means investing in the future. Look again at the consequences of our current trajectory. The true threat to modern life is not dealing with climate change. I end In Nomine Terra Calens with a stripping away of harmonies to finally land on one, lone, very high note. I end without direction to represent the uncertain future. We stand at a decision point where the future of the world really rests on our decisions.
Dr. Lucy Jones
Read about some of Lucy’s specific thoughts about solving climate change on her blog.
#rescuethatfrog