Data & Evidence — Sensing the Planet

Real Data Preview

The diagrams on the Portfolio of Practice page are speculative. This section isn't — it pulls genuinely live, freely public data into the browser right now (no login, no API key, no backend) and runs it through the same toy sensory-mapping logic as Diagram C. The two points below are arbitrary demo coordinates, not this project's actual field sites — same generic-naming rule as everywhere else in this project.

Loading live data from Open-Meteo and NASA Worldview…

Sources: current temperature and wind speed from Open-Meteo (a free public weather model — a live proxy for the kind of near-surface variable Table 1 references, not literally the MODIS land-surface-temperature product). Imagery from NASA Worldview / GIBS, real satellite imagery from the most recent day it's processed. If an image fails to load, your browser or network may be blocking the request — the direct Worldview link still works. The pitch/valve mapping is a deliberately simple, clearly-labelled illustration, not a finished sonification design.

Visual Research — Polar vs Desert Timelapse

Real satellite imagery, stepped across several dates spanning roughly seven months, for the same two illustrative coordinates as above — chosen for visible contrast rather than a single-day snapshot. Four panels, each isolating one variable: polar true-colour with an NDSI snow-cover overlay (MODIS/Terra), desert true-colour with a colourised land-surface-temperature map (MODIS/Terra, the desert node's actual primary dataset), and one UV Aerosol Index panel per node from Suomi NPP's OMPS instrument — not the same product as MODIS aerosol optical depth, but a genuine, confirmed-working aerosol/dust-and-smoke-detection layer, and directly relevant to the airborne-particulate/pollutant direction now being explored for a physical installation. The polar aerosol panel is likely to show little or no data much of the time; that gap is itself informative, not a fault — see the note below and the installation guide's discussion of Arctic haze. This is visual research, not a finished data product — a way of looking at how each environment actually changes across a season, side by side, before deciding how that change should be sensorially translated.

Loading imagery from NASA GIBS…

How to read the overlays

Land-surface temperature (desert panel): light blue = cold → yellow → dark orange = hot. Areas with no valid reading show the true-colour base underneath.

NDSI snow cover (polar panel): a 0–100 index — brighter/whiter = more snow cover detected, darker = less. Cloud cover and polar night are excluded from the retrieval (flagged as no-data, not zero snow), which is why this panel is often mostly true-colour.

UV Aerosol Index, both nodes (OMPS): an unbroken scale from below 0 up to 5+. Below/around 0 reads as clear sky or non-absorbing aerosol (sulfate, sea-salt) and shows mostly true-colour underneath; yellow is light-to-moderate; orange is moderate; red at 5 and above means a heavy concentration of UV-absorbing aerosol — dust or smoke dense enough to reduce visibility or affect health. The tan/brown patches visible in the desert panel are the true-colour desert terrain showing through where the index is low, not part of the aerosol signal itself.

General rule across all four panels, not a description of anything shown above going wrong: if a requested overlay layer isn't available for a given date, the frame falls back to showing the true-colour base rather than failing silently into a blank image.

Potential Data to Use

A provisional dataset framework has been identified. Snow cover/albedo and land-surface temperature are currently the leading candidates for the polar and desert nodes. Additional variables — including aerosol optical depth, wind, sea-ice conditions and extreme-event indicators — remain under evaluation through technical review and sensory prototyping. Final dataset selection will be made only after testing scientific suitability, data accessibility, temporal resolution and sensory legibility.

These are realistic options: NASA provides daily/near-real-time snow, reflectance, albedo and aerosol products; NSIDC maintains daily and long-term sea-ice and snow records; Copernicus/ERA5 provides global reanalysis variables such as wind, humidity and land conditions. Their temporal and spatial resolutions differ, so all of the above remain candidates until tested against the specific field sites and installation requirements.

A More Focused Framework

Five committed datasets may be too broad to prototype, test and analyse well within the project timeline — each requires scientific understanding, data cleaning and quality checks, a defensible sensory-mapping rule, prototype development, audience testing and comparative analysis. A more achievable structure: one primary dataset per node, plus one shared or event-based comparative variable.

Function	Desert node	Polar node

Additional Dataset Possibilities Under Exploration

Per-node and cross-node variables considered but not yet selected — kept visible so the eventual narrowing is traceable rather than just asserted.

Data Resources

The public EO and climate-data portals behind the table above — same list as the workbook's EO_Data_Reference sheet, plus IPCC. Deliberately spans multiple agencies rather than one: NASA's GIBS/Worldview is what actually drives the live imagery above because it needs no API key or registration, not because it's the only or best source for every variable — ESA's Sentinel-5P, for instance, is purpose-built for atmospheric composition and is arguably the stronger scientific fit for the aerosol/pollutant direction than a repurposed MODIS/VIIRS product.

References

The theoretical sources cited in the proposal, linked to their DOI or an open-access copy where one exists.

Precedents

Existing art-science practice this project positions itself alongside.