A New Study Reveals How Climate Change Will Affect Sound Travels Underwater

Climate change is real and happening.

A recent study conducted by a group of researchers revealed that climate change that warms oceans would remarkably change the way sound travels underwater.

“We calculated the effects of temperature, depth, and salinity based on public data to model the soundscape of the future,” said Alice Affatati, lead author, who works in the emerging field of bioacoustics at the Memorial University in Canada.

Marine life is under threat

Published in Earth’s Future, the research has the characteristic of being the first wide-range evaluation regarding sound speed profile in the ocean. The study says possible changes in the near future could not only alter how sound moves underwater but also harm marine life.

It is a fact that sound travels at a faster speed in the water than in the air. As for warmer water, it spreads “faster and lasts longer before dying away,” Phys reported.

In this regard, the scientists involved in the study foresee that the Greenland Sea and a small part of the Atlantic Ocean could experience the envisaged temperature changes at 50 and 500-meter depths.

How sound underwater could change in the future

Seeing an increase of over 1.5% –or 25 meters per second– is a high probability before the end of the century. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the marine soundscape consists of creatures underwater and humans who produce sound waves due to marine vessel traffic activities.

“The major impact is expected in the Arctic, where we know already there is an amplification of the effects of climate change now,” said Stefano Salon, author of the study. “Not all the Arctic, but one specific part where all factors play together to give a signal that, according to the model predictions, overcomes the uncertainty of the model itself”.

“We chose to talk about one megafauna species, but many trophic levels in the ocean are affected by the soundscape or use of sound,” said Affatati. “All these hotspots are locations of great biodiversity”.