This week in all the groups (land, air, and water) we focussed on manipulating our current datasets or a new dataset in such a way that would make the music sounds differently or would appeal to the public differently. Getting to see everyone’s manipulations was very interesting as some of us chose to perform correlations while others chose to graph the different signals within their data. Another important thing to mention about this week is that we got to listen to some of our datasets that Chris had sonified. This was truly exciting as we were finally able to see the outcome of all our research. Hearing back some of the datasets was very powerful as you can actually hear how anthropogenic impacts (CFC’s, plastics in the ocean etc.) have aggravated the state of the environment over time.
Lilo this week decided to focus more on her new dataset of PM2.5 in Canada. She found that since 2011, PM2.5 is decreasing at a steady rate. In terms of her manipulation, she focussed on a graph depicting the component species (mainly ammonium sulphate, ammonium nitrate, ad organic matter) of PM2.5 in different seasons and in different regions of Canada. She found that in eastern Canada, ammonium sulphate is the dominating species, while in the west organic matter dominates, especially in the winters due to the prevalence of campfires.
I on the other hand, decided to work on two older datasets of mine containing the global CFC-11 mean concentrations and the ozone hole area in the south pole between 1979-2018. I decided to perform a correlation analysis of the two variables. Ultimately, I was aware that these two variables have a strong positive correlation (as indicated by the correlation coefficient of 0.8 I retrieved) but I felt that it would be interesting to depict this relationship in music.
References
NASA. (2019). Ozone Watch. Retrieved from https://o zonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/statistics/an nual_data.html
NOAA/ESRL Global Monitoring Division. (2019). Com bined Chloroflurocarbon-11 data. Retrieved from https:/ /www.esrl.no aa.gov/gmd/hats/combined/CFC1 1.html