Sounds of the Ross Ice Shelf and Other Parts of the World #MusicMonday

Fun jumping off point for some (other)worldly sound sleuthing from NPR:

To arrive at their new recording, twelve scientists working on the ice shelf burrowed 34 tools for measuring seismic activity into it, expecting to monitor its internal vibrations. They noticed, however, that surface wind glazing over the “firn” — the top layer of snow of the shelf — was feeding noise into their sensors.

But what was at first considered to be “inconvenient ambient noise,” as the glaciologist Douglas R. MacAyeal put it in a summation of the new findings, ended up giving insight into meltwater effects on that firn layer, giving scientists another data point on the shelf’s structural integrity. Meaning whether or not it will break up, and thus raise sea levels. Not bad for a whistle or two.

Read more and see more from American Geophysical Union (AGU) on YouTube