What Does a Melting Glacier Sound Like? Maybe Like Jim Morrison

: by Bloomberg; on July 12, 2022

TOPSHOT - This photograph taken near Gletsch, in the Swiss Alps, on July 8, 2022 shows insulating foam covering a part of the Rhone Glacier to prevent it from melting next to its glacial lake, formed by the melting of the glacier due to global warming. (AFP)

THE STUDY OF GLOBAL WARMING THROUGH SOUND HAS BOOMED IN RECENT YEARS THANKS TO THE AVAILABILITY OF CHEAP, HIGH-QUALITY DEVICES

The sound of melting glaciers is disturbingly similar to the psychedelic tunes that made Jim Morrison’s The Doors one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all times.

That was my first thought as I listened to recordings of the Kongsvegen glacier in Svalbard by Ugo Nanni, a researcher from the University of Oslo who records glacier sounds using a seismometer. He post-processes the frequencies to make the sounds audible.