Climate Data Turned Into Music: A String Quartet That Brings Warming to Life
When it comes to climate change, most of us are used to seeing graphs, charts, or stark images of melting ice sheets. But what happens when those numbers are turned into music? That’s the approach of Hiroto Nagai, a geo-environmental scientist and composer at Rissho University in Japan, who recently transformed 30 years of polar climate data into a six-minute piece for string quartet.
The composition, titled String Quartet No. 1 “Polar Energy Budget”, takes a scientific record data collected between 1982 and 2022 from Arctic and Antarctic sites and reshapes it into melody, harmony, and rhythm. By doing so, Nagai highlights a concept called the “polar energy budget,” which describes the exchange of solar radiation, heat from the atmosphere, and surface temperature in Earth’s most climate-sensitive regions.
From Data to Music
The technique behind this work is known as sonification, the process of turning data into sound. Scientists have used sonification before like NASA, for instance, has mapped galaxies and nebulae into audio but Nagai’s approach is more deliberate in its connection to classical composition. Instead of abstract soundscapes, he sought to create music that resonates with traditional forms.
The quartet’s melodies and textures emerge directly from the dataset. Shifts in solar and infrared radiation became musical pitches, while changes in surface temperature influenced tone and intensity. Variations in cloud thickness and precipitation shaped rhythm and phrasing. Nagai then layered classical techniques such as dynamics, tempo shifts, and melodic development on top of the raw data. He refers to this process as “musification,” a balance between scientific accuracy and artistic interpretation.
Why Music Matters
Data visualizations can make the scope of climate change clear, but they often fail to create a personal or emotional connection. Music reaches people differently. As climate scientist Scott St. George has noted, turning climate data into sound allows listeners to feel the change rather than only analyze it. That visceral response can make the science more relatable and memorable.
In this sense, Nagai’s project is not just about awareness, but about communication. For decades, climate scientists have been presenting evidence in traditional ways, yet projects like this show the potential of creative mediums to capture attention and engage audiences on a deeper level.
Climate Symphony: A Collective Approach
Nagai’s work is part of a wider movement where scientists and artists collaborate to make data resonate emotionally. One example is Climate Symphony, a London-based collective led by artists and scientists who have spent years transforming climate data into musical scores.
Founded by Leah Borromeo, Katharine Round, and composer Jamie Perera, the project takes climate records and maps them directly onto musical notation. Every bar of music represents a year of data, with Climate Symphony’s compositions covering a 20-year span between 1994 and 2014. Unlike background soundscapes, their music is the data hard facts expressed through sound.
Borromeo emphasizes that music has always been a warning signal embedded in human instinct. By sonifying climate data, she believes the issue becomes harder to ignore. The group works closely with meteorologists, conservationists, and sound artists, ensuring the process remains transparent and rooted in peer-reviewed science. Some data even comes from their own field recordings on English coastlines, documenting areas at risk of disappearing within a decade.
Climate Symphony has also begun to explore how sound can serve as a tool for accountability. Their experiments include using sonification to reveal distortions in political rhetoric, creating a new kind of “fact-checking” through sound.
A Bridge Between Science and Art
Whether through Nagai’s quartet or Climate Symphony’s large-scale collaborations, these projects show how music can connect science and society in a powerful way. They do not abandon the data, but reinterpret it through an art form that makes it immediate and human.
For Nagai, the goal is to highlight Earth’s intricate systems and inspire others to see data as a source for creativity. For Climate Symphony, the mission extends to transparency and global participation. Both efforts remind us that climate change is not just a scientific problem, it is a cultural challenge that requires new ways of communication.
Listening to Change
As climate data becomes more alarming, projects like these provide fresh ways of understanding its urgency. Whether it is a haunting string quartet or a collaborative symphony, the message remains clear: the numbers represent real shifts in our planet’s balance. When translated into music, they become impossible to ignore.
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