The Sound of Climate Change is an outreach and educational project that turns rising atmospheric carbon dioxide into sound and vibration. It allows audiences to hear and feel the changing carbon signal that is usually only seen as a graph.

The work uses climate data, including the Keeling Curve, to translate increasing CO₂ into low-frequency sound. We developed infrasound chair or standing vibrating platform that allows sub-audible frequencies to be felt. The result is a quiet but physical encounter with climate change, where the rise of atmospheric carbon can be felt directly through the body.

The experience connects climate science, acoustics and public engagement. It draws on the physics of greenhouse gases, infrared absorption, atmospheric measurement and data sonification to make an invisible environmental change tangible.

Exhibitions/Events of the Climate Chair

Background

Infrasound

We want to first acknowledge the traditional owners on which this work was undertaken the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation as Traditional Owners and Custodians of the area Boorloo (Perth) as well as the First Nations people of Mauna Loa (Hawaii), we give our respects to their ancestors and Elders and Senior Knowledge Holders, past, present and those following in their footsteps.

We also want to acknowledge the generous funding of

the Acoustical Society of Australia through the Richard Booker Education Grant,
Forrest Research Foundation,
Curtin University and
Indigenous Tours WA (previously through Danjoo Koorliny).

The project was developed and supported by

Curtin University: Curtin Carbon Group/Physics and Astronomy - Dr. Jacob Martin, Ryan van der Berg, Finn Manning, Carl Lares; Curtin Hub for Immersive Visualisation and eResearch - Dr Andrea Rassell; Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST) (Prof. Christine Erbe, Dr Chong Wei, Prof. Robert McCauley, Dr Iain Parnum); John Curtin Gallery - James Dudding, Bjoern Rainer-Adamson; Curtin Outreach - Andrew Hannah; Curtin Place Activation - Greg Dunn; School of Earth and Planetary Sciences - Renae Sayers, Mia Walker,
Indigenous Tours WA (Dr Noel Nannup OAM, Greg Nannup),
Forrest Research Foundation (Louise Renwick, James Arvanitakis) and Minderoo Foundation (Lara Smith).

Explore other Listening to Carbon projects

Carbon Nanoverse: Virtual Reality experience of being in green technology

Kooranyi Nyinning: Mammung’s Lost Song

Climate Skepticism: Resources and talks on connecting with skeptics

Exploring Carbon Activity Box: Classroom activites for carbon and climate literacy

Exhibitions/Events of the Climate Chair

Exhibition at the John Curtin Gallery showcasing the Climate Chair & infrasound research at Curtin University with the Planet Shaker Platform. May 2025

We had 3,200 people through the exhibition over two night. Feedback from the exhibition was that kids was that they are very keen to do something to combate climate breakdown. Many adults were very moved particularly when it got to 2030 when CO2 levels need to peak.

Thanks to Ryan van den Berg for running the exhibition alongside Andrea Rassell.

See photos from the event as well as infographics prepared for the Climate Chair and Planet Shaker platform below.

Bioacoustics laboratory | 15 May 2025

Slides for laboratory.pdf

Presentation - Feeling the climate and blue whales songs.

The Climate Chair was modified with a new class-D amplifier to be highly portable and to used during a undergraduate laboratory on bioacoustics.

Pecha Kucha Event with Minderoo | 23 Oct 2025

The Sound of Climate Change_Pecha_Kucha.pdf

Presentation - The Sound of Climate Change

Demonstrated Climate Chair and small platform with carbon dioxide signal.

See the presentation to the left.

Acoustics 2025 Conference | 13 Nov 2025

Workshop - The Sound of Climate Change (and other infrasound)

Abstract: Come and hear how sound has been used to measure climate change for over 60 years. The 20 Hz signal generated from the Keeling Curve recordings has been turned back into a sound that can be heard and felt using a data sonification led by Dr Andrea Rassell. The seasonal variation is extrapolated back to 1900 when the carbon dioxide level is stable and pushed forward to 2100 according to the RCP2.6 trajectory to provide people with a hopefull path towards the future. This cannot be heard but felt using a special infrasound equipment developed at Curtin University or through the commercially available Woojer belt. Here we demonstrate how low frequency sounds like those from blue whales, asteroids and rockets can be experienced!

A place activation was also set up before the dinner at the Western Australian Aquarium. Thanks to Finn Manning for running the photoacoustic demonstrations. Approximately 20 people visited the workshop and 20-40 people experienced the space activation before the dinner.

Casuarina Prison Programme | 29/30 Jan 2025

Presentation - Carbon Nanoverse and the Energy Transition

Demonstrated photoacoustics with an LED torch and carbon inside green technology like lithium-ion batteries.

See the video to the left showing the activities undertaken.

Tiktok video | 30 March 2025

Ryan van der Berg's Tik Tok video explaining climate change with a infrared camera demonstrations developed as part of this project

WA Acoustical Society Meeting | 21 Oct 2024

Presentation - How Acoustics is Used to Monitor Climate Change?

Demonstrated photoacoustics with an LED torch and portable CO2 monitors that use photoacoustics detection.

How Acoustics is used to monitor climate change.pdf

Richard Booker Education Grant | 12 Nov 2024

The Australian Acoustical Society awarded the "Sound of Climate Change" the Richard Booker Education Grant to explore the photoacoustic detection of carbon dioxide and the history of climate change measurements.

https://www.acoustics.org.au/activities/education-grant/

Background

Charles David Keeling

The ground-breaking measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), started by Charles David Keeling in 1958.

Mauna Loa's fresh air

Keeling chose the island of Mauna Loa as fresh air from the trade winds blew over the island providing a representative sample far from human sources of carbon dioxide.

Model 70 Infrared analyser

Keeling installed an Applied Physics Corporation dual detector infrared analyzer from 1958 that operated until 2006.

What is infrared light?

Infrared light is invsible light with lower energy than red light. Radiant heat from a heater is infrared light.

This was discovered by Herschel in 1800 a recreation of the experiment can be found in the video on the left.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/science-overview/science-explainers/infrared-astronomy/

Listening to infrared light

This was used to demonstrate the the sun produces near infrared light by splitting the light through a prism and listening to the invisble rays.

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared heat

Tyndall in 1882 discovered that infrared light is absorbed by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide using the photoacoustic effect. Flashing infrared light onto a vial filled with carbon dioxide allowed Tyndall to hear carbon dioxide emitting sound as it heated and cooled. A modern demonstration of this can be found here https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ed8000446

Model 70 Infrared analyser

In Keeling's instrument a heat lamp was flashed very quickly using a rotating shutter. This flashing heat caused the carbon dioxide to warm and cool creating pulses of sound that were measured using a microphone.

The loudness of the signal could be directly used to measure the concentration.

More information can be read for free at this article https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac1001492

Keeling, Charles D., et al. "Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa observatory, Hawaii." Tellus 28.6 (1976): 538-551.

Keeling curve

Keeling was able to make many measurements very day to build up the

Keelings first found a seasonal variation as trees in the northern hemisphere took up more carbon dioxide during the summer. This can be thought of as the earth breathing.

By the 1970s the rising trend in carbon dioxide concentration was clear and indicated it was building up in the atmosphere.

https://gml.noaa.gov/outreach/faq_cat-3.html

Carbon dioxide into the past

To measure ancient carbon dioxide in ice cores scientists first crush or melt a small piece of ice inside a vacuum line to release the tiny bubbles of air that were trapped when the snow fell. The liberated air is then fed into a gas chromatograph which separates the gases and measures the amount of carbon dioxide with very high precision. Early systems in the 1970s converted the carbon dioxide to methane so it could be detected more easily and later systems improved the extraction and calibration steps to reach parts per million accuracy. These methods allow us to read the atmosphere of the past directly from the air trapped in the ice and provide the long record that links the Law Dome data to the modern Keeling curve.

Keeping temperature below 1.5 °C

In 2014 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began to use representative concentration pathways. The pathway labelled RCP2.6 provides us a chance of keeping temperatures below 1.5 degrees celcius.

This trajectory and the ice core data was integrated with the seasonal variation as part of a student project by Ty Riekart. The curve can be seen below.

Data sonification

In order to turn this data into something that you can listen to the concentration was mapped to the frequency of the sound. Our ears are most sensitive to frequency instead of volume so this most easily translates the data into something you can listen to.

We also developed a version that includes all of the frequencies up to 280 Hz this is brown/white noise and as the concentration increases the filter moves to a higher frequency.

Infrasound

Vibro-tactile technology for listening to Keeling's curve

Credit: https://dosits.org/

Infrasound

The 20 cycles per second (20 Hz) signal that Keeling recorded are below the audible frequencies for humans. Humans can hear from 20-20,000 Hz.

While we cannot hear these low frequencies we can feel vibrations down to one cycle per second (1 Hz).

Credit: https://audioxpress.com/article/building-a-haptic-dimension-the-science-behind-the-taction-transporter

Tactile bass

Tactile bass audio equipment has been developed to enable mixing of house music in a studio setting enabling the sound to be felt <100 Hz.

For a great article on tactile bass see this link. https://www.earthquakesound.dk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bass_Shakers_and_Tactile_Sound_Audio-Express.pdf

As part of this project we tested different tactile bass equipment and only found the Buttkicker equipment to provide good bass response at 20 Hz.