Ice core walk

Apr 22, 2018
  • Earth Day

April 22, 2018 will mark the 48th celebration of Earth Day. To mark this event, we invite you to take a virtual audio tour down the length of an Antarctic ice-core, exploring the record of natural climate variability on our planet over the past 800,000 years, and gaining a new perspective on the impacts of humans on the climate system over the past several centuries.

 A group of scientists and artists from UBC, Stanford and Berkley has collaborated to produce a 36 minute audio file that creates a ‘sonified’ version of environmental climate data–translating nearly one million years of atmospheric temperature and CO2 data into a musical representation. The audio tour also includes a voice-over narrative, providing context and explanation for the climate record you will hear.

You can do this walk on your own, or invite a group of people to join you. The mobile app will enable you to select a starting point and then automatically plot out a route for you to walk. Please visit http://icecorewalk.org/ for more information and to download the audio files. To share your experience, include the hashtag #icecorewalk on social media platforms.

The project was initiated as part of a collaboration between Chris Chafe and Philippe Tortell, supported by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC.