We’ve got all these brilliant minds discovering crucial aspects of climate change, but telling it to the average Joe ends up being like translating Shakespeare into Klingon.

Science communication is a big problem. And getting people to understand what’s happening is only half of the battle. The real challenge is getting people to do something about it. How do you get people to care?

They have to feel it.

And this is where sound can be of help. Sound gets to our emotions in ways no other sense can. If science is the brain, the sound is the heart (part of at least). We need both to tackle climate change.

Sound has a dual role in the climate crisis. It allows us to see the problem from another perspective and show it to others more clearly…and it speaks directly to our psyche.

When data is presented with sound

What if we could turn data into a soundtrack?

That way we can create impactful experiences that highlight the urgency of the climate crisis. If you present the increase in temperature like this, it’s nice, but it’s not getting to your heart.

Imagine listening to the state of Alaskan forests or the heartbeat of a city under heat stress. We could feel the stress we’re causing on nature much more vividly.

It allows us to make the abstract tangible. We translate hard facts into a language that hits home. It makes it visceral and drives us to do something about it.

For instance, undergraduate student Daniel Crawford from the University of Minnesota composed a music piece based on more than a hundred years of weather data collected across the northern half of the planet.

This is how he explains it:

The notes go lower or higher based on the year’s average temperature in each place. So, low notes are for the chillier years, and the high notes are for when it gets hotter.

Here’s how the composition titled “Planetary Bands: Warming World” sounds, as shared on YouTube:

It’s an interesting take on climate change. From the rising pitch of the melody, you can hear it’s getting hotter every year. This sonic representation doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, but hey, everyone has their jam.

While it’s not directly data sonification, I found the following representation of climate change much more impactful. Based solely on environmental sounds, it shows where we are and how to solve it. Listen for yourself:

Turning on the volume appeals to both our emotions and our logic. It’s a call to action wrapped in a melody of data.

Nature’s healing power

Sounds from nature have a particular effect on us that we don’t usually acknowledge. They boost our minds and bodies via:

• Brain reboot: after walking in nature, people perform 20% better on an attentional task (backward digit-span task) compared to just a 6% improvement after an urban walk.

• Stress reduction: bird songs are commonly associated with positive emotions and low arousal, typically having a restorative effect on our minds and bodies.

• The real deal: real nature experiences provide more significant psychological benefits than virtual nature experiences. However, virtual nature still has some positive effects compared to urban settings. Participants in natural settings also show a greater ability to reflect on personal life problems.

Once people see that natural environments and their sounds have therapeutic benefits, they can have a deeper appreciation for them and a desire to protect them.

Any apps, sound therapy sessions, or public installations that bring the calming sounds of nature to urban settings will help remind people of what’s at stake. It fosters a collective awareness of the importance of preserving that which makes you better.

The hope is that by finding pleasure and healing in natural sounds, people will be more likely to protect and preserve natural habitats. It’s a subtle approach, I know. But it’s a powerful way to connect human well-being with environmental conservation.

What does nature sound like?

Sound sensor systems are also used in environmental research to study the health of marine environments.

For example, monitoring the sounds of the ocean can provide data on the presence and movements of various marine species, the impact of human activities like shipping on marine life, and the health of coral reefs.

When we go to nature we nourish our souls from all those different sounds.

But they’re not just an aesthetic experience.

Bird songs, insect noises, and the rustling of trees are critical indicators of the health of ecosystems. Changes in these soundscapes can signal environmental shifts due to climate change, such as shifts in bird migration patterns or changes in biodiversity.

Tia Merotto’s article dives much deeper into this field, check it out here.

Bernie Krause, whom Tia cites, has been recording wildlife sounds for over forty years. (His title is Soundscape Ecologist, how cool does that sound?) His Wild Sanctuary Audio Archive is stacked with 50 years of valuable sounds from nature, showcasing the planet’s changing rhythms. For the worse, I’m afraid.

He breaks down the sounds of the wild into three categories:

1. Biophony (animal noises).

2. Geophony (natural non-biological sounds like wind and water)

3. Anthrophony (sounds we humans make).

By recording these sounds at the same spot over time, he uncovers clues about environmental changes over time. This is his recording in Sonoma Valley, California, in different periods.

Before 2011, these tracks from spring were a full-on symphony of nature’s sounds — frogs, birds, running water. But then a severe drought hit and by 2015 the place is almost silent. It sounds like death, doesn’t it? It’s a strong indicator of an ecosystem in distress.

His work has shown that even selective logging, which doesn’t seem too bad on the surface, can turn down the volume on insects and birds significantly.

Here’s a haunting video of what’s happening to our world due to climate change from a sound perspective. Again, Bernie Krause is our wake-up call:

Soundscapes are a tool to track climate change, way before we see its effects with our eyes. This allows us to listen to the health of our planet and get real-time feedback on how our actions are remixing the world around us.

Sadly, it’s an early warning system that we rarely listen to.

The three unique sound approaches to fight climate change that we haven’t encouraged enough, then, are:

• Data sonification: transforming temperature readings, ice melt rates, or carbon emission figures into sound shows us a new way to connect, understand, and act for the future of our world. It transcends the barriers of language reaching people directly.

• Therapeutic sounds: the restorative benefits of natural sounds can connect personal well-being with environmental health. When people realize this connection they will (hopefully) foster a deeper appreciation for natural environments.

• Acoustic monitoring: the use of sound sensor systems in environmental research allows us to hear and visualize changes in nature that let us know the health of our ecosystems.

These are powerful tools that leverage our most primal sense to create a deeper connection with our planet.

We’re often unaware of the environmental degradation happening on our planet. We not only have a physical detachment, since we’re in an urban bubble, but an emotional one.

If we just throw data and facts at people, we’ll never get them to act. We need to make them feel the urgency.

With sound, we can turn data into a story and make our planet audible. We can remind the world of what’s at stake. We’re a part of this world and are responsible for it.

These sound tools will allow us to listen to what our planet is telling us. Because if we don’t, the next sound we’ll hear might just be the last gasp of a world we took for granted.