On the surface, climate data and painting don’t appear to have a lot in common. The former is typically associated with meticulous field work and dense research papers. The latter is all about color, brushstrokes, and creativity. But for Jill Pelto, who embeds climate data in her delicate watercolors of natural places and wildlife, the two fields are perfect complements to each other.

Pelto traces her dedication to communicating climate science in large part to how she grew up. Her dad is a glaciologist, and by the time she was in high school, she began making an annual pilgrimage to Washington State to help with his glacier research there. “Getting to see what climate change looks like first hand in such a visceral way was really powerful,” she says of the experience. She has also always loved creating things. So, as a college student at the University of Maine, she combined these two passions, double majoring in art and climate science.

For her master’s thesis project, Pelto came up with idea of directly incorporating climate data in her art. She had just returned from another trip to Washington, and wanted to communicate what she was seeing there in a way that would touch those who couldn’t experience it firsthand. She wanted to “literally show how much change has happened to these landscapes.”

The result was a series of artworks digging into the real-world impacts of rising temperatures. In one piece, she hems in a painting of Washington State’s glaciers with a line graph tracking their shrinking mass. In another, she bisects a painting of charred trees, flames, and smoke with data points showing the increasing frequency of wildfires. A third depicts the impacts of drought on wild salmon populations. Since completing her thesis, embedding climate data in her artwork has become Pelto’s signature. She has illustrated how climate change may shift native plant composition in Maine, the decline of Canada’s George River caribou, and the impact of shifting ocean temperatures on marine species and fisheries.

More Online: See more of Jill Pelto’s work at jillpelto.com

Pelto’s art taps into the anxiety and urgency that scientists often feel about their work but may struggle to communicate to the public. Her creations facilitate the dissemination of climate science as well, helping people to learn about the climate crisis in a new way and, she, hopes, offering people a gateway to greater engagement. “I do really believe that thinking and talking about climate is really important,” she says. “And learning about some aspect of it can really influence the kind of actions we take in the world.”