A few decades ago, a team of researchers placed subwoofers in an underwater region of an island located in the Indian Ocean. The subwoofers generated a low frequency that could traverse oceans, and it was detected in Bermuda and California, offering more information about the temperature of the water.

The project was sidelined due to concerns related to the way in which the noise could affect marine life, but a team of researcher has borrowed the concept and developed a new method which harnesses the same principles to measure earthquake noises and determine the temperature of the water.

Tracking the noise

According to the mixed team of researchers, small earthquakes that take place regularly in the same area can play the role of subwoofers, generating stable singles that can be measured to learn more about the temperature of the water at impressive depths of more than 2000 meters.

If the new method is validated, it could pave the way for the development of a new system used to measure ocean temperatures across the world. Such a system would provide essential information about the climate in the past and present, while also inferring what may happen in the future.

Absorbing heat

Oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat, which is kept in by global warming. An alteration of the way in which oceans trap or retain the heat could lead to large-scale disasters. While some efforts have been made to measure temperatures at great depths, the sheer amount of water poses a difficult challenge.

New information collected with the help of the method has revealed that the temperature of the Indian Ocean has risen by 0.044 degrees Celsius in a decade while also suggesting that the current system, which is used for measurements, is unable to detect heat in some areas.

A paper was published in a scientific journal.