Drawing Data: A Conversation With Climate Artist Jill Pelto

Inspiration In The Field

In addition to her undergraduate experience spanning both art and science, Pelto went on to specialize in climate science, completing a master’s degree in Geological Science at her alma mater, where her thesis focused on the sensitivity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to changes in the Earth-Climate system. She amassed countless hours of fieldwork in ecosystems around the world, from Canada and New Zealand to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands. Her most important fieldwork, however, is a bit closer to home. 

Pelto’s fascination with the natural environment began at an early age. Her father, Mauri Pelto, is a professor and glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, best known for running one of the most prominent longitudinal glacier studies to date.¹ Since she was in high school, she’s accompanied her dad during his annual field season, monitoring glacial change in the North Cascades of Washington State as a part of his North Cascades Glacier Climate Project. 

"It's really fortunate that I've gotten to do such a long-term science fieldwork based project. So a lot of science seems to be kind of funded in short timeframes, like a grant that funds a project for a few years. And so you have to go outside of that system to have long term projects. And that's what my dad has done with the North Cascade Climate Glacier Project. It's more self-funded, and sometimes we have some support from a small grant or something. This is his 40th year of the project, and he's led it every year since he created it. And so, this was my 15th year, helping out for the whole time and I now co-direct the project with him. I just feel like growing up getting the opportunity to do something like that is just so incredible. I have gotten to fall in love with this landscape, and see it changing." 

With many climate studies, time is the name of the game. As Pelto says, the terrain differs from year to year depending on a variety of weather-related factors. But the beauty and complexity of running a study over several decades is the ability to more thoroughly observe the patterns of the glaciers, which have likely existed since the last ice age some 14,000 years ago.² But since Pelto’s father’s inaugural field season in 1984, the only constant seems to be change.

JP: "Because it's so much a part of my life and because I've spent so many months of my life up in these same places year after year and seeing so much change, that does have that big emotional toll. This summer was a really, really bad year. And so there's years that it kind of will hit home and be hurt or emotional whereas [some] years it's okay, the snow in the mountains is a little bit better. The glaciers didn't change too much in this one year, so you can kind of forget or pretend [...]

They're retreating, but it's slow, and then you get reminded of how fast it is, and that it just keeps speeding up. Maybe two or three glaciers that we work on, we decided this year are just officially not glaciers anymore. It's just ice. It's just sitting there, it's not flowing. It's just like a big patch of ice is going to melt away. And so that was really intense to see and the major changes were really intense to see this year."

Declaring a dead glacier a victim of climate change is, well, easier said than done. There’s a multitude of factors at play, human-induced warming temperatures being just one of many potential causes. For this reason, it’s even more critical that Mauri Pelto and co. have lived up to his promise to document changes in the range for half a century³—garnering a more thorough understanding of the area than ever before. 

What sort of impact does the Glacier Project hope to have by documenting these glaciers, year in and year out? 

JP: "There's a bunch of different elements to it. One is just to document the changes every single year. There's not a lot of datasets like that out there that have exact changes to landscapes and what it looks like, year to year. There's some times where I've noticed like, oh, wow, like that's crazy—there’s a new lake under this glacier! That's sad, but then there's the part of you that's like, Oh, that's so fascinating to be able to have the numbers and the data for the future because some of these, a lot of these glaciers, obviously, will completely be gone. Some of them will persist, but way smaller than they are today. And people wouldn't know how fast these changes are, or what exactly happened. And so we'll have a lot of that information that you could never get again. And so that's one thing is recording, preserving that story and that history." 

JP: "Understanding the rate of change for the landscape and ecosystem and kind of all the repercussions of that whether it's plants or animals and the water. The water is a really big part of it and where there's a lot of concern because a lot of areas in the world rely on either glaciers or snow, like high amounts of snowpack and the mountains to supply the drinking water water for irrigation for the reservoirs, everything for the fish that we eat, for the hydropower. There's all these very present day implications. So, if we can better understand how fast the glaciers are retreating, that's just one thing. It's like, okay, well, here's what's been happening to the stream, like the discharge, how much lower it is and the temperature of the stream, how much warmer it is. These things that we need to know now and to kind of predict, Okay, well, just the next, you know, 10 or 50 or 100 years kind of look like."

The NCGCP is retrospective—that is, assessing how the glaciers have changed over time. While glaciers have always periodically advanced and retreated, and years of heavy snow can help to replenish some of the worst-off sections, the Pelto's are witnessing a more significant melt-off than ever before in their data⁴. But having access to such a thorough dataset may allow scientists critical understanding of the ways in which glacial loss may impact the world around them.

Refusing To Let Hope Melt Away

Despite the damning nature of many climate stories, Pelto believes that it’s important they’re told. She tends to stick to the facts and figures, but searches for pieces of climate positivity to incorporate into her work. Pelto also actively works to combat the heaviness of her own work by remaining hopeful about climate action that’s being taken around the world. From local Climate Action Plans to widespread activist movements, she continues to be inspired by her community.

‍So many climate stories [and yet] a lot of them are really bad news. How do you remain hopeful when you go out into the field and see that you’re losing more glaciers? 

JP: "There were a lot of really emotional moments and I feel like that's why I think it's awesome that I can make art about science, because I think sometimes people view science as not emotional, which is really untrue. That's just not going to come across in something like a scientific paper. So I can make it my role to tell those stories in a more emotional way." 

JP: "I’m trying to put in elements that bring something more positive... Sometimes it's been literally showing data about something like renewable energy use in different places in the world. And so, just showing people action. I end up kind of telling just a little piece of those stories. I feel like there's certain things that I try to pay attention to because those good stories can sometimes not get as much attention."

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It’s Time For The Prominence Of Climate Art

From rugged mountaineering trips to creating fine art inspired by her explorations, Pelto’s greatest achievement might just be the pinnacle of a career dedicated to both scientific observation and communication. In July of 2020, she was contacted to design the cover for TIME Magazine’s “One Last Chance” issue.

‍Arguably one of your biggest opportunities [as a climate artist] so far has been designing a cover for TIME Magazine. How did you go about creating that piece?

JP: "The Creative Director for TIME is behind most of the covers and I think he has a lot of stuff in mind as potentials for covers, whether it's a photographer, an artist, or someone else to work with. He had heard about my work online in a feature, he didn't remember where, but had been keeping it in mind. And so he had reached out to me because they have been doing a climate issue every July for a while now. 

The way that they work in that world is very fast-paced, which is not how I work. I had like two weeks from when he contacted me to kind of design it and get my idea approved and then make it, whereas I would normally spend a few months on a painting! So I just prioritized that but designing something for Time, I really wanted it to [show] global climate change on a big scale, not just focus on the U.S. or a certain region.

And so all of the stories [in the issue] were about global change and I used five different datasets because I really wanted to highlight how these things are really interconnected. And I really wanted to highlight the kind of stuff that I do with my work because there's going to be [in front of] such a big audience. It was really cool to weave together those stories in that way and I was proud of how it turned out and I was so blown away that it was chosen." 

The final product, titled Currents, was a culmination of Pelto’s career in science communication, depicting global climate change over two centuries. Datasets subtly weave their way through the artwork, which features delicate watercoloring and intricate details of nature, notably glacial fragments and a dense forest. 

The various lines of data in the piece segment her work, and its double meaning is explained with the small labels. The jump in global CO2 emissions and average global temperature is indicated with two lines, as is the positive correlation between land ice and sea sea level—as the “land ice” curve plunges rapidly, the cool blue sea level line skyrockets. 

From magazine covers to trekking through the remaining glaciers of Northern Washington State with sketchbook in hand, Jill Pelto stands at the forefront of a new form of climate communication. Her incredible visuals, grounded in science, offer a new way to resonate with people of all ages, genders, and experiences around the world, telling compelling stories of the issues that she cares about most.