Melting sounds of an entire glacier recorded for the first time
A 9-kilometre fibre-optic cable that captured the sounds of melting ice across an entire glacier could improve how researchers measure ice loss
Environment
14 December 2022
Rhone glacier in Switzerland has been monitored by an optical fibre
Tomas Bazant/Shutterstock
A fibre-optic cable recorded the sounds of a melting glacier in the Swiss Alps across its entire length. This marks the first time that researchers were able to capture such sounds across an entire glacier.
“The fact that you can just spool out a fibre on the surface of a glacier and let it get snowed in and then use that as a sensor, that’s revolutionary,” says Brad Lipovsky at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Lipovsky and his colleagues …
