It’s simple as an idea, but far from simple in practice. Related: Nuclear power could be the future of expedition cruises That could be key to understanding how much ice will melt in the future. “If we can count how many bubbles are coming out of the ice in any specified unit of time, we can figure out how much ice has melted,” says Deane. Their findings were published in the Cryosphere journal in 2020.Īir bubbles could also reveal vital information. Using underwater microphones to record the sound of calving events in Hans Glacier, at Svalbard, northern Norway, along with time lapse photography, Deane and Oskar Glowacki from the Polish Academy of Sciences demonstrated that the amount of ice loss can be estimated from the noise produced when an iceberg crashes into the ocean. We need to be able to forecast the stability of these ice sheets so that we can plan well and live well as our environment changes,” he says. “As the ocean rises, it’s going to impact so much of our civilization. That inspired Deane – who was already listening to the ocean’s breaking waves to understand how gases transfer from sea to air – to turn his ears to glaciers. In 2008, distinguished oceanographer Wolfgang Berger co-authored a piece in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience that proposed using hydroacoustics (sound in water) to monitor Greenland’s ice sheets. Using underwater sound to predict ice melt is still a relatively new field. That’s one reason why acoustics, which can be monitored from afar, could be so valuable. And there is the “deep, ominous rumble” of a calving event, when a block of ice breaks off from the end of a glacier, which he says sounds like extended thunder.īoth events happen in the boundary where the ice meets the ocean, typically a very dangerous area for humans. There is the “bright, energetic sound of bubbles exploding into the water as ice melts,” he says, which he compares to fireworks or sizzling bacon. “If we want to (forecast) sea-level rise … we need a way of monitoring these glacial systems and underwater sound could be an important and interesting way of doing it.”ĭeane, who has worked in the field of underwater sound for more than two decades, explains that there are two main processes by which glaciers retreat, both of which make a distinct noise. “Glaciers are undergoing rapid retreat as the atmosphere and the ocean warms,” says Grant Deane, research oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. With many glaciers around the world shrinking because of the climate crisis, scientists are looking to analyze these noises to predict exactly how quickly ice is melting and what that could mean for sea-level rise. Cubes of it have long been used on cruise ships in Alaska, added to a Scotch or a gin and tonic, as the ice gives off a unique hiss when it slowly releases the highly pressurized air that has been trapped there for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years.īut the sounds made by glaciers can be used for more than just novelty ice cubes. The large bodies of densely packed ice may look like motionless masses, but they flow and fracture and grow and shrink, and these processes are anything but silent. Snap, crackle, pop: the sound of a glacier.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |