A JMW Turner exhibition opened yesterday at The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Well-known for his astonishing renditions of the Sublime, Turner’s aesthetically overwhelming landscape paintings are cluttered with references to literature, mythology, and historical events. Surprisingly, the British 19th Century painter claimed that his work was not to be understood but to “show what such a scene was like”.

That’s exactly what global warming scientists are doing these days. Taking advantage of Turner’s prosaic nature, they improve predictions of the consequences of climate change. The scientists analyze the striking sunsets painted by Turner (and other artists) to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. Seeing how the climate varied naturally in the past, they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming.

Christos Zerefos, one of the scientists who led the research: “We’re taking advantage of the attitudes of famous painters to portray real scenes they were looking at. This is the first attempt to analyze this old art in a scientific way, and tells the story of how our climate has varied naturally in the past.” The team also wants to study forty paintings from the 20th century, to see if artists have captured the effects of pollution on sunsets since the industrial revolution.

Here for the article.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Arts, Environment, Exhibitions, Science and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.