As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference, the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever.
The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three researchers to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of a melting glacier.
Ludwig Berger, a sound artist from Alsace in France, first recorded the sounds of the Morteratsch Glacier in Switzerland more than a decade ago. What he heard astonished him: deep resonances of ancient air bubbles being released from crevices and making sounds like wailing synthesizers.
As Mr. Berger put it, he records “last sounds.” Each time he returns to record, he has to climb farther up the mountain to reach the ice, as the glacier has retreated. The locations of many of the sounds you’ll hear in his soundscape are now gone, he said. “There’s no ice left there, there’s just a bare rock,” he said.
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