In 2013, University of Minnesota undergrad and cellist Daniel Crawford used a process called data sonification to convert 133 years of global temperature records into music, resulting in the work, A Song of Our Warming Planet.
Now a graduate, Crawford (once again in collaboration with geography professor Scott St. George) has created a new composition that highlights the rapidly changing climate — this time, with Planetary Bands, Warming World for string quartet.
Each of the four instruments of the quartet is used to describe the pace and place of global warming, based on temperature analysis from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The cello represents the temperature of the equatorial zone (0° - 24°N), the viola tracks the mid-latitudes (24° - 44°N), and the two violins match the high latitudes (44° - 64°N) and the arctic (64° - 90°N).
The resulting work can be seen in the video below, performed by U of M students Julian Maddox, Jason Shu, Alastair Witherspoon and Nygel Witherspoon.
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