Since 1993, global sea levels have been rising by an average of 3 millimetres per year. Sonification makes the wave-like rise audible.
As part of the World Climate Conference, the European Space Agency (ESA) is organising a "Little Pictures of Climate Competition", inviting people to visualise its climate data as small pictures "that spark awareness and drive action". For example global sea level rise:
The rise comes in waves: from spring the sea level starts to rise, and from autumn it starts to fall. But the waves have an upward trend, the data show: since 1993, sea levels have risen by an average of 3 millimetres a year.
As sonification, these rising waves and the global rise in sea level become audible. Like a swelling menace:
Sometimes sonifications can better convey the message of data: Sounds have an immediate impact on our emotional experience because they speak directly to our feelings.
Here you can open the sonification in DataSonifyer. And this is how you can recreate it:
- Download the data by clicking on "Get the data".
- Open the DataSonifyer
- Click "Load Data" and select the CSV file from the image. Specify a comma "," without quotation marks.
- Select "Membrane" as sound. Set the BPM to 220 so that the data points are played quickly one after the other (FYI: In the Rhythm module, the "Custom" setting should be 0.25 - but this is the default setting. If you have not edited anything yet, this will still be set).
- Click "Add Sound Modules" and tick the Frequency, Amplitude, Filter, Envelope and Effect boxes.
- Frequency-Modul: Select the „Median rise in Meter“ data series. Set the minimum audio frequency (Min Freq) to 110 and the maximum audio frequency (Max Freq) to 440. This is the distance between A2 and A4, i.e. two octaves. As no scale mode has been selected, the distances between the data are reproduced in a more correct scale.
- Envelope-Modul: Select "Attack" as "Type" and set the "Custom" envelope to 1 second: As this is a diaphragm sound, a higher attack envelope will soften the sound a little, making it sound milder - in addition, a longer release time is automatically generated. The result is a somewhat boomy sound that can be raised or lowered depending on the data.
- Amplitude-Modul: Mache die Sonifikation etwas leiser, indem du bei „Custom“ 0,3 einstellst.
- Filter-Modul: Also select "Median Rise in Meter" as "Data" and a "Lowpass Filter" as "Type". Set the filter cut-off frequency between 80 (Min Cut) and 1000 (Max Cut). This creates an effect as if the sound is gradually rising from the depths - like the level of the sea.
- Effect-Modul: A "reverb" effect makes the sonification more spatial: Reverb effects create musical reverb. This makes the sound sound like it is echoing in a room. The stronger the reverb effect, the more reverberation you will hear. This can create a sense of distance. Select "Reverb" for "Type" and "Median Rise in Metres" for "Data". Then set Min FX to 0.9 and Max FX to 0.1. This will invert the conversion of the data: low data values will be represented by a high reverb effect, and high data values will be represented by a low reverb effect - i.e. the higher the data value, the lower the reverb, the "closer" the sound will feel.
- For the final sonification, the sonification was recorded with the "Noise" sound with a slightly shorter envelope (0.5). Both sonifications (membrane and noise) were overlaid in Audacity.
- Done!