Listen to the Ocean Warming 

The ocean plays a key role in regulating global climate and temperature changes, because it absorbs most of the excess energy due to the anthropogenic greenhouse effects. However, quantifying the global ocean heat content change, especially the deep ocean, remains a challenging sampling problem. In order to augment the existing point measurements, we proposed a novel and low-cost method of seismic ocean thermometry (SOT), which uses acoustic waves from natural earthquakes, called T-wave, to infer large-scale average ocean temperature changes. In this seminar, I will talk about how we apply SOT based on the land-based T-wave station and CTBTO hydrophones to the Indian Ocean. In this case study, we have detected not only strong temperature change features (e.g., annual, semi-annual, etc.), which are broadly consistent with that in previous oceanographic datasets (i.e., ECCO and Argo), but also interesting signals missing in ECCO and Argo. Recently, we are working on the frequency and mode dependent travel time changes of T waves and its capability to reveal depth information of ocean property changes. I will talk about the challenges and opportunities of the multiple frequency measuring and mode tomography. 

About this Series: The Department Lecture Series at EAPS at MIT is a series of weekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology, geophysics, geobiology, geochemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography, climatology, and planetary science. For more information and Zoom password please contact Madelyn Musick: mmusick@mit.edu