Earth system music: music generated from the United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1)

de Mora, Lee; Sellar, Alistair A.; Yool, Andrew; Palmieri, Julien; Smith, Robin S.; Kuhlbrodt, Till; Parker, Robert J.; Walton, Jeremy; Blackford, Jeremy C.; Jones, Colin G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-263-2020

Articles | Volume 3, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-263-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-263-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 3, issue 2

Research article

|

11 Sep 2020

Research article |

| 11 Sep 2020

Earth system music: music generated from the United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1)

Lee de Mora, Alistair A. Sellar, Andrew Yool, Julien Palmieri, Robin S. Smith, Till Kuhlbrodt, Robert J. Parker, Jeremy Walton, Jeremy C. Blackford, and Colin G. Jones

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Sep 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jan 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC1: 'This seems to me rather silly', Paul Pukite, 19 Jan 2020
- AC3: 'Authors response to Paul Pukite', Lee de Mora, 17 Apr 2020
RC1: 'Review for gc-2019-28', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Feb 2020
- AC1: 'Authors response to to Anonymous Referee #1.', Lee de Mora, 17 Apr 2020
RC2: 'Review of manuscript by Mora et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 Mar 2020
- AC2: 'Authors response to to Anonymous Referee #2.', Lee de Mora, 17 Apr 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (27 Apr 2020) by Sam Illingworth

AR by Lee de Mora on behalf of the Authors (30 Apr 2020) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 May 2020) by Sam Illingworth

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (22 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (29 May 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

--

Thank you to the authors for addressing and responding to all of our feedback. We are satisfied with all of their changes, and how they addressed our initial feedback. The manuscript looks really great, and we are excited to see it published and for future iterations of this work to develop as the authors suggested in their response to us.

We had one minor point that we’d like to see changed before th paper is published. That is that we are unsure of the need for the following statement to be included in the manuscript, because it’s a bit too much detail and detracts from the main messages a bit:

‘The comments from social media were listed above in sect.~\ref{sec:results} and were almost all positive and supportive. However, these comments are biased towards the authors friends, family and professional colleagues. These comments include several positive comments and praise, comments about the pieces themselves (``it gets dramatic at 1950- 1960``), comparisons to other musicians or works of art (e.g. System of a down, Herman Hess's book Glass bead game, the Axis of Awesome medley ), one person ``didn't understand what the point is``, and the final three comments were from a music forum and contain some interesting insight into the musical side of the work. While we hoped to disseminate information about Earth System modelling to a wider audience, it's not possible to determine whether the audience learned anything about Earth System modelling using the metrics provided by YouTube studio or the comments posted on social media. Furthermore, it is not possible to determine whether the audience was composed of laymen or experts'.

Instead, we believe the latter part of their response addresses what we had in mind, is more to the point, and clear for the reader that this was a pilot study and that there are some additional things to consider in the future. We would retain the text below in the discussion, but remove the text above.

‘As this was a pilot study, we did not go into greater detail to understand the audience reactions. Future extensions of this project should include a survey of the audience, investigating their backgrounds, demographics, what they learned about Earth System models and their overall impressions of the pieces. This could take the form of an online survey associated with each video, or a discussion with the audience at a live performance event.’

Apart from that we are satisfied that the authors have addressed our feedback and that the article is ready for publication.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Jun 2020) by Sam Illingworth

Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed editing of the manuscript, which for the large part addresses most of the concerns of the two reviewers.

However, I have selected this paper as requiring ’major revisions’ for a second time, because I am in complete agreement with Reviewer 1 with regards to quantifying the dissemination of the musical pieces. In their report, Reviewer 1 has laid out two different strategies for how you can address this.

1. Either you reformat the paper and follow up with a secondary paper at a later date with a more detailed evaluation of the dissemination and its impact.
2. Or you spend the time in conducting a more detailed analysis, focussing on a thorough quantitative or qualitative (or both approach).

Reviewer 1 has indicated that they would prefer the second option, but I would actually prefer the first, as I think that this is an incredibly interesting and well-written paper that has much to offer, and which would benefit from a further study to address your third aim (i.e. to quantify the dissemination of musical pieces).

I leave the decision up to you, but please could you inform me which you decide to go with, and then we can go from there. Please could you also make the additional minor revisions as suggested by Reviewer 1, and also by Reviewer 2.

I understand that it might be frustrating for this paper to go through ‘major’ revisions again, but I don’t think it will require too much additional work, and I truly believe there is an excellent opportunity to turn this into a wonderful manuscript by implementing the changes recommended above.

If you require any further clarification on any of this, please just let me know. And thank you again for your professionalism, patience, and sincere engagement with the peer-review process.

Many Thanks,

Sam

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AR by Lee de Mora on behalf of the Authors (08 Jul 2020) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Jul 2020) by Sam Illingworth

ED: Publish as is (16 Jul 2020) by Iain Stewart (Executive editor)

AR by Lee de Mora on behalf of the Authors (16 Jul 2020)

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Short summary

We use time series data from the first United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1) to create six procedurally generated musical pieces for piano. Each of the six pieces help to explain either a scientific principle or a practical aspect of Earth system modelling. We describe the methods that were used to create these pieces, discuss the limitations of this pilot study and list several approaches to extend and expand upon this work.