Global Warming is now audible too, says new research

Warming is now audible too, says new research

Times of India Bangalore, May 26, 2009 

Ask any skeptic of global warming to keep his ears open and he would get to hear the evidence. With large portions of ice shelves falling off and glaciers melting, the ravages of climate change are not just visible, now it’s audible too with larger and more intense storms, say researchers.

    According to a new study, it’s now possible to hear the rise of global warming in the form of more, larger, more intense storms — signs of climate change, many scientists say. For decades, seismologists have been filtering out the sounds of massive, stormdriven ocean waves crashing into coastlines. The pesky noise was getting in the way of earthquake detection, reports National Geographic.

    But now some experts are electronically filtering out the quakes — and turning up the volume on the storm waves. The noise of waves crashing ashore creates very specific vibrations, according to study leader Peter Bromirski of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And those vibrations indicate how severe storms at sea actually are.
    Bromirski and others are still studying seismological data on storms from the 1930s to the present and are waiting to release the full analysis to the public. But a trend is already obvious, he said. “There is a definite increase in severe storm events over the years that we are noticing at the recording stations”.
    That consistency may be reassuring to researchers. For example, weather-satellite data have been used to identify evidence of a trend of intensifying storms, but some scientists say satellite tech, having changed so much over the decades, is problematic for tracking storms in the long term. AGENCIES