Mountain Glacier Melt to Contribute 12 Centimeters to World Sea-Level Increases by 2100.

The largest contributors to projected global sea-level increases are glaciers in Arctic Canada, Alaska and landmass bound glaciers in the Antarctic. Glaciers in the European Alps, New Zealand, the Caucasus, Western Canada and the Western United Sates--though small absolute contributors to global sea-level increases--are projected to lose more than 50 per cent of their current ice volume.

The study modelled volume loss and melt off from 120,000 mountain glaciers and ice caps, and is one of the first to provide detailed projections by region. Currently, melt from smaller mountain glaciers and ice caps is responsible for a disproportionally large portion of sea level increases, even though they contain less than one per cent of all water on Earth bound in glacier ice.

"There is a lot of focus on the large ice sheets but very few global scale studies quantifying how much melt to expect from these smaller glaciers that make up about 40 percent of the entire sea-level rise that we observe right now," says Valentina Radic, a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences and lead author of the study.

Increases in sea levels caused by the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the thermal expansion of water, are excluded from the results.
Radic and colleague Regine Hock at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, modelled future glacier melt based on temperature and precipitation projections from 10 global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"While the overall sea level increase projections in our study are on par with IPCC studies, our results are more detailed and regionally resolved," says Radic. "This allows us to get a better picture of projected regional ice volume change and potential impacts on local water supplies, and changes in glacier size distribution."

Global projections of sea level rises from mountain glacier and ice cap melt from the IPCC range between seven and 17 centimetres by the end of 2100. Radic's projections are only slightly higher, in the range of seven to 18 centimetres.

Radic's projections don't include glacier calving--the production of icebergs. Calving of tide-water glaciers may account for 30 per cent to 40 per cent of their total mass loss.

"Incorporating calving into the models of glacier mass changes on regional and global scale is still a challenge and a major task for future work," says Radic.
However, the new projections include detailed projection of melt off from small glaciers surrounding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have so far been excluded from, or only estimated in, global assessments.

Aerial photo of Mount Garibaldi, Diamond Head with Howe Sound and Squamish British Columbia below. Melt off from small mountain glaciers and ice caps will contribute about 12 centimetres to world sea-level increases by 2100, according to University of British Columbia research. (Credit: iStockphoto/Douglas Burne)

System for Detecting Noise Pollution in the Sea and Its Impact on Cetaceans

In 2007, the Applied Bioacoustics Laboratory started work on a project called Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment (LIDO). It set out to record sounds on the seafloor and subsequently assess the extent to which artificial noises (maritime traffic, fishing, offshore facilities, military maneuvers, etc.) affect the quality of life of cetaceans in terms of any disorders they may suffer, or even their deaths.

Under the supervision of Michel André, the Applied Bioacoustics Laboratory (LAB) has now developed algorithms that automatically interpret these sounds, classify them in real time by their biological or anthropogenic origins and, within this division, the species of cetaceans present in the area analyzed are identified. Using the data obtained, it is possible to measure the extent to which noise pollution has an impact on the conservation of ecosystems.

This is the first system of its kind in the world and saves considerable analysis time and human resources in the detection and classification of noise, as these processes are completely automated. Thus, the technology prevents a continuous flow of unanalyzed acoustic data from overloading hard drives at research centers. Before now, this was one of the problems in processing uninterrupted data streams.

Finally, the acoustic signals and the result of the analysis can be listened to and seen live over a website that is available to the international scientific community and to laypersons

The importance of noise in the sea
There has always been natural and biological noise in the sea. However, the recent, uncontrolled introduction of artificial noise in the sea on an unprecedented scale poses an even greater threat to its equilibrium than any other source of pollution in the marine environment.

The sense of hearing is vital to cetaceans, as they use it to find prey, navigate in the sea, migrate and distinguish members of the same species. Therefore, their survival depends on their sense of hearing working properly.

Using a set of 13 hydrophones installed in over 10 underwater platforms located all over the world, the UPC's system detects the presence of cetaceans and enables scientists to study the relationship these animals have with other mammals in their habitat. This innovative system therefore opens unexplored avenues in the biological study of these species. However, the importance of the LIDO project lies in the possibility of better understanding the sensitivity of cetaceans to sources of noise pollution, detect the interaction of these animals with human activity and, more importantly, it will make it possible to take decisions for mitigating noise when the lives of these mammals are threatened.

To date, the increase in beached whales, sperm whales and other cetaceans around the world has been put down to the greater noise levels caused by fishing, sea trade, military maneuvers, and the construction of oilrigs and offshore wind farms. Thanks the technology developed by the UPC's research team, based on the Vilanova i la Geltrú Campus, it will now be possible to accurately ascertain whether there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the two events.

Based in this information, governments, institutions and businesses that operate in the sea will be able to establish response protocols to prevent these species from falling victim to exposure to noise of an anthropogenic origin that may cause damage to their hearing and, therefore, an imbalance in marine ecosystems.

First step for regulating noise pollution in the sea
The LAB has in fact written a manual of good practices for managing noise pollution in the sea at the request of the Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs, within the framework of the eCREM (Effects and Control of Anthropogenic Noise in Marine Ecosystems) project. The manual is the first step for drawing up a draft bill and good practices to regulate noise pollution in the sea in Spain, which is one of the first countries in the EU that intends to introduce regulations to this regard.

It should be taken into account that forecasts show that maritime traffic in the Mediterranean basin will increase significantly over the next few years to mitigate the atmospheric pollution derived from the transport of goods by road. The new EU directive on the sea rules that all member states must comply with a set of indicators for measuring marine noise pollution before 2012. A group of 11 experts from around Europe, one of whom is Michel André, the director of the LAB, are currently working to establish exactly which indicators are to be used.

The LAB has planned to develop alarm technologies in the near future. They are to be installed on various devices, such as autonomous buoys and underwater robots, which would send off warnings that cetaceans are approaching areas with high noise levels and set off response protocols.
The UPC team has devoted 15 years to the study of noise pollution in the sea and to the creation of technological solutions that make it possible to combine human activities and the interests of industry with the conservation of cetaceans and the marine environment.

The LAB is placing particular emphasis on the study of the effects of noise pollution on cetaceans because these marine mammals are at the top of the food chain, and their activities depend on the exchange of acoustic information. Therefore, their reaction to sources of noise pollution helps to determine the general state of marine environments. Cetaceans are considered to be bioindicators of the acoustic balance in oceans.

International network of underwater observatories
The LIDO platform, which records underwater noise in different parts of Europe and North America, is open to the international scientific community.
Noise sources are detected by hydrophones installed on over 10 underwater observatories. Some of the LIDO sensors have been deployed on the European Seafloor Observatory Network (ESONET), one of whose members is the UPC's Expandable Seafloor Observatory (OBSEA) located on the coast of Vilanova i la Geltrú. The LAB has another set of sensors installed in the deep sea infrastructures of the ANTARES project, an international collaboration that focuses on detecting subatomic particles called neutrinos, which move through space without being stopped by matter. Finally, there are another three hydrophones in North America on the seafloor platforms of the NEPTUNE network in Canada.

The LAB is in the final stages of reaching an agreement with Japan to install the technology on 17 platforms designed to detect the risk of earthquakes in the Asian archipelago.

Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment (LIDO) website. (Credit: Image courtesy of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)