Scientists have developed a novel method to determine how fast the Indian Ocean is warming by analysing the sound from seabed earthquakes, an advance that may lead to a relatively low-cost technique to monitor water temperatures in all of the oceans. According to the researchers, including those from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US, as much as 95 per cent of the extra heat trapped on the Earth by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide is held in the world’s oceans; making it vital to monitor the temperature of ocean waters.
In the current study published in the journal – Science, the scientists used existing seismic monitoring equipment as well as historic data on earthquakes to determine how much the temperature of the ocean has altered and continues changing, even at depths that are normally out of the reach of conventional tools. They assessed a 3000-kilometre-long section in the equatorial East Indian Ocean, and found temperature fluctuations between 2005 and 2016, with a decadal warming trend that “substantially exceeds previous estimates.”
“The ocean is the main reservoir of energy in the climate system, and the deep ocean, in particular, is important to monitor,” he added. Since undersea earthquakes happen all over the world, the researchers said the system can be developed to monitor water temperatures in all of the oceans using existing infrastructure and equipment at a relatively low-cost.
