The Heard Island Feasibility Test

SEP 01, 1992

An expedition in the southern Indian Ocean demonstrated that coded underwater acoustic signals can be received worldwideand serve as a method for measuring global ocean warming.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881317

Arthur Baggeroer

Walter Munk

The release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is associated with temperature changes in both the atmosphere and the oceans. The oceans play a vital role in global temperature changes, storing both heat and greenhouse gases. Without the oceans the atmosphere would warm at two to three times greater a rate, other factors remaining equal. To understand and predict global warming, then, it is important to measure, rather than just speculate on, changes in the heat content of the ocean.

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More about the Authors

Arthur Baggeroer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Walter Munk. Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.