In recent years many scientists have taken expensive and arduous treks to our planet’s poles and permafrost to examine the effects of global warming the traditional way, with their own eyes. Researchers from Curtin University of Technology have adopted a clever technique to conquer the tyranny of distance, by listening to the sounds created by the break-up of the Antarctic ice shelves – all the way from the comfort of sunny Perth.
This research conducted by Dr Alexander Gavrilov and PhD student Binghui Li is far from being a case of two scientists with an aversion to the cold. Over six years ago, Dr Gavrilov saw an opportunity to find another use for a pair of remote underwater listening stations originally constructed as sensors to monitor nuclear weapons testing for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation.
In order to prove that these old underwater watchdogs could provide reliable information from great distances, sea noise data was recorded by the Australian Antarctic Division on an autonomous acoustic logger on the Antarctic continental shelf. This data was then compared against the readings being collected at the listening station based off the coast of Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, confirming the researchers were picking up the sound created by ice breaking away from the shelf.
Aside from this being good news in terms of setting up an ever-vigilant cost-effective ‘ear’ to keep tabs on the effects of climactic change on the Antarctic from so far away, many would consider the lack of evidence of increased intensity in Antarctic ice noise even better news. However, the Curtin researchers are not dismissing the potential threats of global warming at all.
“Six years of results is not long in the scheme of things, so we will keep watching. Antarctic ice could be the canary in the Earth’s climatic coal mine.” Dr Gavrilov said.
With the Curtin University researchers due to present their findings at a conference in Europe before the end of the month, this may soon lead to vastly improved monitoring of global warming’s effect on the rate of ice break-up on a global level.
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I would have thought 6 years is enough to detect some kidn of change considering how people have been stating that global warming is occurring at an accelerated rate these days. And if you look back on it, all the weather changes have occurred in under 10 years, with longer hotter summers and very cold winters. Maybe in a year or two they might find some interesting results.
It seems we are discovering ways to measure and detect environmental changes from afar. I was just reading about the earthquake detection theory and now I've come across another long range tracking theory. How accurate these methods will be I would like to find out, but even if only a rough estimate could be ascertained from the data collected its still better than nothing.