Climate and music (Toward development of the interdisciplinary climate and cultural understanding education of ESD with special attention to the seasonal cycle and “seasonal feeling” around Japan and Europe)

Most music pieces have their own cultural background, and the origin and expression of songs are closely related not only to their languages and customs but also to the regional characteristics of natural environment including the climate 10 and its seasonal cycles. Thus, scientific study of the climate and seasonal cycle in a regional context would be also useful for understanding the context of music, as well as the other background. Inversely, such approach enables us to sympathize with the feeling of the people and to sing and appreciate the songs, even for the other regions. By the way, climate education is an important part of the ESD (Education for Sustainable Development), relating to education on environment, disaster prevention, climate variability, and also cultural understanding. Furthermore, it could 15 contribute greatly to promoting the “Fundamental ESD Literacy” such as thinking of various complex relations, diversity, understanding of “Heterogeneous others”, and so on. Based on the above concepts, we have continued the interdisciplinary integration of the knowledge on climate and music, and have developed the crosscutting study plans on the climate and cultural understanding education. A part of these results have been just published in a Japanese book titled by “Climate and music (Cultural understanding and ESD spreading from 20 the “Doors of Song”)” (Kato, H. and K. Kato 2019), building mainly our papers written in Japanese, some of which were also introduced at EGU2014-2019. This article will re-integrate our above results, mainly for the climate and songs/traditional seasonal events around Germany, Northern Europe and Japan.

In this review article, we will re-integrate the results of our joint activities mainly on the following topics (1) to (3), referring to our previous papers and books (although written in Japanese).
(1) Asymmetric seasonal march from autumn to the next spring around Japan.
(2) Winter climate around Germany in association with the traditional events "Fasnacht" for driving winter away.

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(3) Seasonal cycle and "seasonal feeling" around Northern Europe with special attention to the climate and summer solstice festival there, with comparison of summer climate around Japan.
In the book by Kato and Kato (2019), the topic on the activity with focus on the seasonal march from spring to summer through the Baiu (significant rainy season) around Japan is also presented. As for this topic, the lesson practice was made for the university students of music course in Faculty of Education, and the musical scores of the works composed by them 105 together with climate description from spring to summer around Japan Islands were recorded in the book. However, that topic could not be shown here due to limitation of the space.
2 Interdisciplinary lesson studies on climate and cultural understanding education with attention to the asymmetric seasonal march from autumn to the next spring around Japan 2.1 Asymmetric features of the seasonal march from autumn to the next spring and the relating "seasonal feeling"

around Japan
As shown in the right panel of Fig. 4, the mean air temperature in winter from northeast Siberia to Japan is rather lower than in the similar latitude regions and such cold air mass is called the Siberian Air Mass. At that time, so called the Siberian High and the Aluetian Low at the surface level tend to persist during winter and such pressure pattern is called the "winter pressure pattern" in East Asia (Fig. 5). In that situation, the huge amounts of sensible heat and latent heat are supplied from 115 the underlying sea along the path of the very cold air from the continent, and the convective mixed layer due to the shallow cumuli develops over the sea. These result in the climatologically huge snowfall in the Japan Sea side of the Japan Islands in winter (e.g., Ninomiya 1968Ninomiya , 2006Ninomiya , 2007. Besides, it is also interesting that the lowest mean temperature stage around Japan (e.g., at Tokyo) lags to that in northeast Siberia (e.g., at Ojmjakon) by about a month (the left panel of Fig. 4), greatly reflected by the more phase lag of the seasonal 120 progression in the subtropical or tropical western Pacific. Reflected by the earlier seasonal rapid temperature fall around the northeast Siberia, the appearance frequency of the "winter pressure pattern" begins to increase already in November (early winter) (Fig. 6). However, the air temperature around the Japan Islands is rather higher than in early March (early spring) when the appearance frequency of the "winter pressure pattern" is nearly the same as in November. Thus the precipitation in the plain area of the Japan Sea side in Japan in the "winter pressure pattern" is brought not as snow but mainly as rain. The 125 intermittent rainfall due to the shallow cumuli in such situation is called "Shi-gu-re" ( ) in Japanese (consisting of the two Chinese characters which mean for "sometimes" (or intermittent) and "rainfall", respectively) and is often used for expressing the "seasonal feeling" in early winter in the Japanese classic literature. Especially we can see them in the https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-18 Preprint. Discussion started: 28 April 2020 c Author(s) 2020. CC BY 4.0 License.

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However, the solar radiation is rather stronger in early spring than in early winter, as indicated by the seasonal variation of daily mean solar radiation reaching the outer atmosphere, daytime length and the duration when the sun altitude angle is higher than 45° at 35N (Fig. 7) (Kato et al. 2019). Such asymmetric seasonal progression from autumn to the next spring around Japan would result in rather different "seasonal feeling" between early winter and early spring. For example, while the "Shi-gu-re" is often used for expression of the "seasonal feeling" in early winter in "Wa-ka" as mentioned above, the 135 light snow under the relatively strong sunshine, and so on, is one of the popular scenes presented in the "Wa-Ka" for early spring (e.g., Fig. 8). In turn, such difference of the "seasonal feelings" between early winter and early spring might be useful for deeper understanding of the seasonal cycle of the climate system around Japan. As such, the next subsections will report our interdisciplinary lesson practice mainly for the university students in teacher training course, with focus on the asymmetric seasonal progression from autumn to the next spring around the Japan Islands referring to Kato et al. (2013Kato et al. ( , 140 2014Kato et al. ( , 2017b, Kato and Kato (2019), and so on. (1) Brief summary on the climatological features in that season and the appreciation of the "seasonal feeling" expressed in the Japanese classic art works

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(2) Expression of the seasonal feeling with coloured papers (Art) (3) Expression of the seasonal feeling with small percussion instruments (Music) (4) Expression with the colored papers on the bases of the activities 2 and 3 (Both).
About 35 students took part in this class. About the four fifth of them are not specialized in natural science. This class is open for the all grade student. In this year, the numbers of the second and third grade students in this class were 9 and 20, 155 respectively, and there were also several participants of the first and fourth grade, respectively. Prior to this joint activity, Kato, K. had explained to the students the climate around East Asia including the detailed seasonal cycles such as the asymmetric seasonal progression from autumn to the next spring around Japan.
In Activity (2), the students tried the expression of the seasonal feelings in early winter and early spring, respectively, by using the 6 colors selected from the 96 colored papers, based on the Johannes Itten's (1888-1967) exercise for the expression of the four seasons (Itten 1961). At the beginning of this students' activity, the following announcement was made. 1) Represent your sense of the seasons with 20squares (4 X 5) of 2 papers (two stages for the early winter and early spring). 2) Select the two stages for the detailed comparison as above. 3) What colors represent seasons? Select 6 colors from a set of 93 colored papers. 4) Think about which color combination is the best. Arrange and paste colored papers on a sheet. 5) Post up your work on the wall of this lecture room at the proper position in the order of seasonal progression from autumn to 165 spring through winter.
All works by the students in this activity exhibited in such manner are presented in Fig. 9.
In Activity (3), the students tried to express their own seasonal feeling on early winter and early spring with attention to the difference between the stages just before and after the midwinter, by using the various small percussion instruments (Fig. 10).
Their composition works were described in the form of the "graphic notation" proposed by Morton Feldman. Each student 170 composed two works expressing early winter and early spring, respectively. Then, students were divided into several groups and each group played a selected set of their works. It took about 30 seconds to play a work. In the Activity (4), the students expressed the seasonal feeling of early winter or early spring with the less restricted usage of the colored papers than in Activity (2). The concept, outline and results of this lesson practice were briefly introduced also at the EGU2014 (EGU2014-3708) and 2015 (EGU2015-2667).

Difference of the seasonal feeling between early winter and early spring around Japan expressed in the students' works in Activities (2) and (3)
Analysis results of the students' works in Activities (2) and (3) (mainly for Activity (3)) will be briefly introduced after Kato et al. (2014). As for the works in Activity (2) (see Fig. 9), the cool colors were mainly used with accentuate use of warm colors such as dark red and orange expressing fallen leaves and dead leaves in the works for early winter. It is also 180 noted that the students tend to prefer the dark colors as for the cool ones. On the other hand, diverse combination of the rather different colors among the students' works tended to be used for expressing the seasonal feeling of early spring, i.e., not only the contrast between cool and warm colors, but also that on saturation and lightness. The cool colors seem to stand for the cold air and wind, early spring snow, and so on, while the warm colors remind us of the rather strong solar radiation or flowers of plum and cherry. Thus, the students' works as the whole with use of the colored papers seem to express the 185 rather different climate features between early winter and early spring as mentioned in 2.1.
As for the students' music works in Activity (3), according to Kato et al. (2014), the students' works consisted of both the descriptive expression of the meteorological or climatoligical phenomena peculiar to the target seasons and the abstract one such as the marching season and the related emotion. Besides, various kinds of fluctuations such as the "Shi-gu-re" (intermittent rainfall in the "winter pressure pattern") in early winter, day-to-day alternation of the cold and warm day, were 190 also presented in their works. An example of the students' music works comparing the seasonal feeling between early winter and early spring is shown in Fig. 11. Some additional explanation by the present authors is also made. The students' works succeeded to present what they intended to present about the asymmetry between early winter and the early spring.
Furthermore, the students' works seem to express not only the seasonal feeling derived from the mean seasonal state, but also from a specified situations in the day-to-day variations or repetition of the day-to-day cycles embedded in the seasonal 195 progression. For example, as illustrated in Fig. 12 (Kato et al. 2014), although the seasonal mean temperature is higher in early winter than in early spring around Japan Islands, the "maximum value" as the day-to-day variation of the daily mean temperature in early spring can exceed the "minimum one" in early winter.
If the people tend to have a stronger impression of the colder days of the early winter due to the seasonality toward winter and that of warmer days in early spring, it might not be unnatural that the people would feel early spring warmer than in 200 early winter, not only due to the condition on the stronger solar radiation in early spring illustrated in Fig. 7. In general, the people's feelings are rather diverse even in the similar environment. This would be greatly due to the emotional factors. But it should be also kept in mind that we could have many choices what kind of daily meteorological conditions we have stronger impression of, because of their rather great day-to-day variability even within a specified season. Thus, depending upon the other personal situations, a part of the natural environment characteristics including their variability could emerge 205 selectively (just we can say the "sensitivity filter") in the people's mind to form their diverse seasonal feeling. The present activity also suggests that not only the seasonal mean meteorological factors but also the characteristic of their day-to-day variability could affect greatly the peoples' seasonal feeling. Inversely, such "sensitivity filter" on the seasonal feeling seems to give us an interesting viewpoint for deeper understanding of the climate environment including the seasonal cycles with large day-to-day variability.

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By the way, our group has made a lesson practice on the similar theme (only the collaboration between climate and music) also at a senior high school (Kato et al. 2017a) for about 2 hours. Although the detailed introduction of this lesson will not be shown here due to the space limitation, the students tried to arrange the 6 Japanese school songs in the detailed seasonal order from autumn to winter and the other 6 ones from winter to spring by appreciating the seasonal feelings expressed in these songs, together with the study on the related climatological features (Fig. 13).
215 is finished to get ready for bonfire, so it is only to wait getting dark". They are going to sing and dance throughout night together.
As Kato et al. (2019) indicated, while more extremely cold days than around Germany tend to appear intermittently in winter around Northern Europe accompanied by the large day-to-day variations, the mean air temperature from late June to July just 260 after the summer solstice gets almost as high as in summer around Germany (Figs. 14 and 15). Besides, as indicated in Fig. 7, the daytime length attains more than 18 hours even in the southern part of "Northern Europe" (60°N) (that is, the very short night), together with the relatively strong sunshine in the daytime. However, the rather cold days begin to appear already in September (Fig. 15), which seems to relate to the seasonal feeling of the rather short summer compared even with that around Germany.

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As such, we should note the importance to refer to the climatological magnitude of variability even for understanding the "mean features" of the climate systems or their related "seasonal feeling", as illustrated in 3.1 and 3.2. (1) Brief summary on the climatological features in winter in Europe, comparing with those in the Japan Islands and appreciation of the "seasonal feeling" expressed in the European painting.

A report of interdisciplinary lesson
(2) Appreciation of the music works on the European winter and video watching of "Fasnacht". Then, creation of the music works on their own feeling of "Fasnacht" with small percussion instruments, and playing their music works as in 2.2.1.

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(3) Expression with the colored papers comparing the "seasonal feeling" between midwinter and early spring in the Japan Islands as in 2.2.1, and then, brief explanation of the related climatological features.
About 30 students took part in this class. About the two third of them are not specialized in natural science. This class is open for the all grade student. In this year, the numbers of the first and third grade students in this class were 16 and 7, respectively, and there were also several participants of the second and fourth grade, respectively. In Activity (2), their music 285 works were described in the form of the "graphic notation" proposed by Morton Feldman, as in 2.2.1.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-18 Preprint. Discussion started: 28 April 2020 c Author(s) 2020. CC BY 4.0 License. Figure 19 indicates four examples of the students' composition works (Ex. 1 to Ex.4) on the original "Fasnacht" in Activity The lightly falling snow was expressed with bell and chajchas at first. As the phrase is repeated again and again, the volume 300 of the bell is enlarged together with the short-term fluctuation of that volume. Near the final phrase, large spring drum sound, etc. is added, which presents the just driving the severe winter away.

Discussion from the students' composition works in Activity (2)
(Ex. 4) "Threaten the winter to retreat" Feeling of threatening the winter to retreat was expressed. Loud clapping and bell sounds at the beginning stand for defeating the winter. The feeling that the winter has gone out was expressed by the cymbal sound at the end of this piece.

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The emotion of the spring coming was also presented by the gradually increasing triangle sound toward the end of this piece, due to its bright image.
From these works, we can find out the following. In Ex.1, the student's unique sense on sending (not driving) the winter seems to be expressed well. In Ex. 2, the darkness of winter and the merry spring atmosphere are illustrated contrastingly. In 310 Ex.3, the gradual seasonal progression of the retreating winter is presented with the combination of changing loudness and tone of the sounds. In Ex. 4, the cymbal is effectively used for the symbol that the winter has retreated out. In these activities, students firstly tried to understand or imagine why the people living there can't help driving the winter away, based on the climate data. They seem to have an opportunity for realizing the climate in foreign regions and the "seasonal feeling" there, through the composition and performance of the music works in such processes. (1) Brief summary on the climatological features around winter in Europe comparing with those in Japan, and appreciation 325 of the "seasonal feeling" expressed in Northern European pictures

A report of interdisciplinary lesson practice on the seasonal cycle and the "seasonal feeling" around Northern
(2) Watching video material of the traditional seasonal events and life in Northern Europe, appreciation of the traditional songs there, and then, students' composition and performance of the music works with small percussion instruments on the summer solstice there. Performance was made as in 2.2.1.
(3) Expression with the colored papers on the summer solstice in northern Europe after a brief explanation on the Johannes 330 Itten's (1888-1967) exercise for presenting the four seasons, as in 2.2.1.
13 students took part in this class. 2 students are specialized in natural science. This class is open for the all grade student. In that year, the numbers of the first and third grade students in this class were 4 and 6, respectively, and there were also 3 participants of the other grades, respectively. In Activity (2), their music works were described in the form of the "graphic notation" proposed by Morton Feldman, as in 2.2.1. As for the appreciation of the seasonal feeling expressed in the music 335 works, the following Finnish folk songs were used, i.e., "February has come", "An old frost-man", "A tune of spring", "The night of the summer solstice" and "A summer day of Kangasalla". The concept, outline and results of this lesson practice were briefly introduced also at the EGU2018 (EGU2018-2822) and 2019 (EGU2019-13141).

Discussion from the students' composition works in Activity (2)
Students' viewpoints in expressing their music works (13 works in total) were summarized as the descriptive expression of

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Also in this activity, the students seem to have an opportunity for realizing the climate in foreign regions and the "seasonal feeling" there, as in 3.3. We should also note the importance of referring to the climatological variability even for understanding the mean features of the climate systems and their related "seasonal feeling", through the activity on the climate and seasonal feeling for Germany and northern Europe.

4 Summary and discussions
In this review article, our interdisciplinary research on climate and music, and the interdisciplinary lesson studies on climate and cultural understanding education for promoting the fundamental ESD literacy were introduced, mainly for the climate and songs including the traditional seasonal events around Germany, Northern Europe and Japan as follows.
(1) Asymmetric seasonal progression from autumn to the next spring around Japan.

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(2) Winter climate around Germany in association with the traditional events "Fasnacht" for driving winter away.
(3) Seasonal cycle and "seasonal feeling" around Northern Europe with special attention to the climate and summer solstice festival there, with comparison of the summer climate around Japan.
The choice of the study areas or targets including the European regions not so familiar to the Japanese students in their usual 380 lives was aimed to give the advantage for developing the students' ability of deeper understanding and imagination on what they have not experienced, leading to promote the students' ability of "Understanding of the Heterogeneous others". Thus, in the analyses of our lesson practice results based on the students' works, we checked how deeply the students considered what they try to express with integrating what they have learned throughout this class, rather than how well their works have been completed.

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Main climatological features and the results of the interdisciplinary activities on the topics (1) to (3) are as follows.
The topic (1) indicates that while the appearance frequency of the "winter pressure pattern" in early winter and in early spring around Japan is nearly the same, air temperature is rather lower in early spring. But the solar radiation is rather stronger in early spring. As for the topics (2) and (3), the "seasonal feeling" of the "severe winter" around Germany and 390 Northern Europe seems to be associated with the intermittent appearance of the extremely cold days as the very large day-today variations, and the seasonal feeling of short summer around Northern Europe would be due to the early seasonal appearance of the rather cold days already in September also as the large day-to-day variability.
The results of the lesson practices on those topics illustrate that not only the seasonal mean temperature or solar radiation condition but also the large day-to-day variability including the appearance of the extremely low temperature events, and so 395 on, was strongly reflected in the students' works, although the statistical evaluation on the students' understanding would be also needed in the future.
Finally, some viewpoints of understanding of the characteristics of the climate relating to the seasonal feeling for our interdisciplinary lesson study will be briefly discussed.

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One is on the variety of patterns of the mean seasonal cycles. Most simply, seasonal cycles of the meteorological elements are generally characterized as sinusoidal waives. However, in detail, they are sometimes rather distorted from the sinusoidal shape from region to region, as well as the amplitude and phase. For example, as illustrated in 3.1 and 3.2, the period of the highest stage of the seasonal mean temperature around Germany is rather longer (from the beginning of June to late August) than in Northern Europe (from late June to late July), although the day-to-day temperature variation is also large in both 405 regions. As for the Japan Islands, the highest temperature season is from late July to late August, although such description was not made in this article. In addition, some meteorological or climatologocal elements in the same region show sometimes rather large phase lag of their seasonal variations among each other, as mentioned on the above topic (1) around the Japan Islands, i.e., those among the appearance frequency of the "winter pressure pattern", mean temperature, sunshine conditions, and so on, relating to the feeling on the asymmetric seasonal progression from autumn to the next spring.

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Another important viewpoint is that we should pay attention also to the day-to-day variation features. This seems to be relating greatly to the students' recognition how the winter in German is severe compared with that in Japan, for example, on the above topic (2), together with that on the short summer in Northern Europe on the topic (3).
As such, our series of studies introduced in this article seem to illustrate the usefulness of taking notice of the difference of the seasonal cycle patterns and magnitude of the day-to-day variability relating to the seasonal feeling for the 415 interdisciplinary climate-cultural understanding education. However, there are many other types of the seasonal cycles in association with the regional variety of seasonal feelings even within the mid-latitude or higher latitude regions. For example, the German seems to have another special seasonal feeling of autumn to early winter. The German poems "Im Herbst" (In the autumn) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1885Rilke ( -1926, "Im Nebel" (In the fog) by Hermann Karl Hesse (1877 -1962), and so an, might be the typical examples. But the interdisciplinary lesson studies based on the further inter-comparison of the seasonal 420 cycles and seasonal feelings including those topics are the interesting remaining problems in the future.  https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-18 Preprint. Discussion started: 28 April 2020 c Author(s) 2020. CC BY 4.0 License.