Jill Pelto is an Earth Scientist and an artist. She combines her skills and talents to create beautiful water color paintings depicting the environmental changes caused by climate change, like glacier loss and the increasing impact of wild fires.

At first when you look at her paintings you might see only a beautiful image of nature. Look closer and you’ll see the data that inspired the image: declining fish numbers, increased ocean acidity, a reduction in sea ice extent.

She grew up hiking around glaciers in the North Cascades with her glaciologist father, Mauri Pelto, and it is her direct observations of changes in that environment that inspired her to become both a scientist and an artist. And her art is designed to pique the public’s interest in climate change and other environmental issues. She says “Most of the population doesn’t pay attention to the scientific community and research. That’s the group I want to target.”

For more on Jill’s art see her web site, http://jillpelto.com, and this article at Climate Central http://www.climatecentral.org/news/these-paintings-turn-climate-data-into-art-19986.