Undersea earthquakes shake meteorology

Photo: An artist’s drawing of seismic waves under the sea. See and more

Attribution: California Institute of Technology

Although climate change appears to be causing people to melt in hot winters or glaciers from time to time, the world’s oceans retain about 95 percent of the excess heat trapped on Earth due to greenhouse gases. For this reason, monitoring seawater temperature is a priority. For meteorologists, California Institute of Technology researchers have now found that seismic sounds on the coast could provide them another tool for that.

In a new Science paper publication, researchers explain how current seismic monitoring equipment and historical seismic data can be used to determine how much the Earth’s ocean temperature changes and changes even at depths that are usually inaccessible. Than traditional equipment.

They do this by listening to the sounds of the many earthquakes that regularly occur under the sea, says John Callis, associate professor of environmental science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology and co-author of the study. Callis says the seismic sounds are powerful and can travel long distances across the ocean without weakening them noticeably, making them easier to monitor.

Wenbo Wu, a postdoctoral researcher and author of a paper on geophysics, explains that when an earthquake occurs under the ocean, most of its energy travels through the earth, but part of that energy is transmitted into the water by sound. These sound waves propagate outward like seismic waves traveling from the source of the earthquake to the ground, but the sound waves move very quickly. As a result, the ground waves first reach the seismic station, then the sound waves, which appear as a secondary signal for the same event. The effect is similar to the way you see a flash of lightning before you hear the thunder.

“These sound waves in the ocean can be clearly recorded by earthquakes farther than thunder – thousands of kilometers away,” says Wu. It is noteworthy that they are “much higher than the vibrations that travel deep into the solid Earth, which are widely used by seismologists.”

The speed of sound in water increases with the temperature of the water, so the team realized that the time it takes for sound to travel a certain distance in the ocean can be used to lower the water temperature.

“The important thing is that we use frequent earthquakes – frequent earthquakes in the same place,” he says. “In this example, we’re looking at earthquakes from Sumatra, Indonesia, which we estimate when they reach the central Indian Ocean. It takes about half an hour to travel that distance, and the water temperature is about a tenth of a second.”

Since they have used a seismometer at the same site in the central Indian Ocean since 2004, Wu added, they can look at the data collected whenever an earthquake occurs in Sumatra. At the same time the ocean.

“We use small earthquakes that are small enough to cause damage or even be felt by humans,” Wu says. “But a seismometer can detect them over long distances, so it allows us to observe large changes in the ocean temperature over a specific path.”

The data they analyzed confirms that the Indian Ocean is warming, as shown by other data collected by other methods, but this may warm up faster than previously estimated.

“The ocean plays an important role in the rate of climate change,” he says. “The ocean is the main reservoir of energy in the climate system, especially the depths of the ocean. One of the advantages of our method is that the sample of sound waves is less than 2000 meters, as conventional measurements are very small.”

Based on the previous dataset, and comparing its results, the ocean’s warming is 69 percent higher than previously thought. Nevertheless, since more information needs to be collected and analyzed, Callis cautions that immediate conclusions should be drawn.

With earthquakes occurring around the world, Callis says he and his colleagues can expand the system to monitor water temperatures in all oceans. It is relatively inexpensive as current infrastructure and equipment use this technology.

“We think it can be done in many other areas,” said Calis. “By doing so, we hope to contribute data on how our oceans are warming.”

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The thesis, entitled “Seismic Ocean Temperature Measurement”, appears in the September 18 issue of the journal Science. Wenbo Wu, postdoctoral researcher in geophysics, co-authored; Songwen Shan (PhD ’13), Assistant Professor of Geophysics; Sheroy Bing, a graduate student in environmental science and engineering, all from California Institute of Technology; Sidao Ni (MS ’98, PhD ’01) from the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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