After meeting online, I read Lukrecia’s paper, Seasonal Atmospheric Responses to Reduced Arctic Sea Ice in an Ensemble of Coupled Model Simulations, in the Journal of Climate. The meeting beforehand was helpful so that I knew what the end goal was whilst wading into the specific details of the model being described.

What was novel about the piece of work was in its uniting atmospheric and ocean models, thereby introducing a shifting system of around 100 elements. By preloading the system with a much (80%) diminished level of sea ice coverage in the Arctic, the work revealed how this, single change held significant repercussions at lower latitudes.

The range of elements and their interactions is daunting, though not quite overwhelming. I can see right at the outset that we have to find a way of creating sub groups, identifying lead-role elements.

Because the model is based on a year, i know that I will have 365 daily readings for however many elements we can successfully port into the music software.

I am relying on the fact that a musical base structure is already broadly suggested by the model. Groups of related elements can be assigned to an indicative musical ‘voice’. The various voices corresponding to atmospheric and oceanic elements will play in ensemble.

Using the device of a cycle, already inferred by the marking of broad seasonal shifts in the data, we will be able to play through a year - a control year - in which none of the variables are altered to provoke changes. I had thought that this might be a pre-industrial year, but Lukrecia seems satisfied that the initial state model will suffice. Naturally, I am happy to trust her opinion. she is the scientist. But it does feel odd to be taking the control year to be a point where we are already deeply implicated in affecting change.

My plan is to take this control year as the place to calibrate the voices. The seasonal changes will provoke stepped changes in the readings but I’ll seek to ensure that nothing descends into disharmony.

My head is filling up with clouds - rather than clear ideas - of how to musically represent elements; cyclones, salinity, the voice of ice itself, evaporation, precipitation, shifts in current speeds, storm tracks being pushed south… How to avoid the chaos suggested by a complex system when to exist within that system only seldom appears to be stirred into chaos.