Predicting the contribution of climate change on North Atlantic underwater sound propagation

Since the industrial revolution, oceans have become substantially noisier. The noise increase is mainly caused by increased shipping, resource exploration, and infrastructure development affecting marine life at multiple levels, including behavior and physiology. Together with increasing anthropogen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2023-10, Vol.11, p.e16208-e16208, Article e16208
Main Authors: Possenti, Luca, Reichart, Gert-Jan, de Nooijer, Lennart, Lam, Frans-Peter, de Jong, Christ, Colin, Mathieu, Binnerts, Bas, Boot, Amber, von der Heydt, Anna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic and Marine Chemistry
Climate change
Climate Change Biology
Climatic changes
Environmental Impacts
Human impact
Marine biology
North Atlantic Ocean
Ocean acidification
Physiological aspects
Science Policy
Sea-water
Shipping noise
Sound propagation
Thermohaline circulation
Underwater acoustics
Wave propagation
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Summary:Since the industrial revolution, oceans have become substantially noisier. The noise increase is mainly caused by increased shipping, resource exploration, and infrastructure development affecting marine life at multiple levels, including behavior and physiology. Together with increasing anthropogenic noise, climate change is altering the thermal structure of the oceans, which in turn might affect noise propagation. During this century, we are witnessing an increase in seawater temperature and a decrease in ocean pH. Ocean acidification will decrease sound absorption at low frequencies (500 km). In the case of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, this sub-surface duct will only be present during winter, leading to similar total mean square pressure level (SPL.sub.tot ) values in the summer for both (2018 to 2022) and (2094 to 2098). We observed a strong and similar correlation for the two climate change scenarios, with an increase of the top 200 m SPL.sub.tot and a slowdown of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) leading to an increase of SPL.sub.tot at the end of the century by 7 dB.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.16208