The Antarctic is no stranger to weird sounds, from ancient trapped air bubbles popping to entire ice sheets disintegrating. Now we can add another freaky track to the oeuvre of icy masterpieces. A happy accident!
Scientists monitoring the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica captured the acoustic oddity. Using a series of ultra sensitive seismic sensors, they produced a soundscape that would fit in perfectly at a Halloween haunted house or as the soundtrack to a 1950s B-movie about aliens arriving on Earth. But beyond being spooky, the sounds reveal how numerous processes from winds to warming are changing Antarctica’s ice.
In 2014 researchers were deploying seismic equipment on the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest hunk of floating ice in Antarctica, to study the crust and mantle underneath it. Chaput hopped on board hoping to tease out seasonal changes to the ice shelf’s mass, “and instead found strange spectral anomalies that escaped easy explanations, suggesting high frequency trapped seismic waves in the top couple of meters of snow.”
In essence, disturbances on the surface get trapped as seismic waves that ripple through the ice shelf. The team documented those wild waves in a Geophysical Research Letters paper released on Tuesday. They also released some of the sounds they captured over the course of more than two years of continuous recording:
Those top couple meters of loose snow and ice are called firn, and they’re very vulnerable to what’s going on above the surface, from changes in wind to changes in temperature. And with the sensitive seismic equipment buried below the surface, Chaput was able to intimately document much more than just seasonal shifts.
The frequency of the tune changed after storms blew through, which in itself is interesting. But what really stood out is a January 2016 warm spell when temperatures cracked freezing. The pitch of the tune dropped during that stretch, indicating that the snow and bits of ice melted, slowing down the propagation of seismic waves through the firn. More importantly, the pitch drop didn’t reverse itself after temperatures cooled back down, indicating permanent or semi-permanent changes in the firn layer.
“Melting of the firn is broadly considered one of the most important factors in the destabilization of an ice shelf, which then accelerates the streaming of ice into the ocean from abutting ice sheets,” Chaput said.
The Ross Ice Shelf is located in West Antarctica, parts of which could face an unstoppable meltdown owing to the shape of the bedrock beneath the ice that allows warm ocean currents to undercut the floating ice shelves. The melting of this unstable region could raise sea levels by roughly 10 feet.
This type of monitoring could provide more horror movie soundtrack fodder, though if we’re being real, what’s happening in Antarctica is frightening enough on its own.
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Geophysical Research Letters – Near-Surface Environmentally Forced Changes in the Ross IceShelf Observed With Ambient Seismic Noise
Earther – Scientists Discover a Weird Noise Coming From Antarctic Ice Shelf
Haarp.
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LOL! Yes I will! Thank you!
That guy in the picture (in Antarctica) is very close to where the firmament meets the earth, where the dome comes to rest. Naturally there are strange sky formations and noises and vibrations, since the beginning of time. Cool / sobering stuff. I know, most of ya’ll think I’m crazy, and that’s ok. Research FE, and it won’t take long to see how it all works.
what a frigging muppet get a life
Thank-you for this report.
Please go to Geoengineeringwatch.org for verifiable hard facts and data regarding the warming oceans and climate engineering the biggest causal factor to rapidly warming ocean and planet. Dane Wiggington Lead researcher is holding the rescheduled( due to the CARR fire last July) “Call to action” awareness event In Redding. This event will be recorded and posted asap. I recommend watching “Hacking the Planet” Center of the homepage of Geoengineeringwatch.org.
REAL REASON For Total Shutdown Of Youtube?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btXfE13pmd8
Trump has been talking about “Shutting down the internet” for years. “They” are really afraid Internet has become the major information outlet instead of TV, the weapon to brain wash people. Especially, Youtube has become the major media, getting more popular than TV. Yes, “They” are planning to shut down Internet including Youtube. The 2 hour outage of Youtube last night was just to see how people react to the 2 hour outage of Youtube. They were testing to see how much reaction they get from people on the Earth.
Especially “They” are afraid that people are getting information outside of 3D Matrix “They” are creating and managing. “They” do not want people to get too much knowledge outside “Their” Matrix, and “They” lose their power on the Earth. Once those Reptilians in Government lose people’s support, and people start realizing the Government has been operated by some kind of strange cannibal aliens (Lizard People), their Reptile 3D world will be over.
Anyone that think there are intelligent fuckin lizards controlling the earth needs to be locked in a mental institution.
They do, nd even more.
Dont say judgements too fast.
The greatest mistake of knowledge is limiting it to what you assume you know. Doing that willingly and knowingly is even worse. Your true colors are showing.