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Scientists, Navy consider future of sonar in warming oceans

Ocean waters are becoming warmer, but they're becoming noisier -- making sonar detection exceedingly difficult.

By Brooks Hays
The U.S. Navy is working with researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to better understand how warming waters will affect their sonar technologies. Photo by UPI/Adam K. Thomas/US Navy
The U.S. Navy is working with researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to better understand how warming waters will affect their sonar technologies. Photo by UPI/Adam K. Thomas/US Navy | License Photo

SALT LAKE CITY, May 25 (UPI) -- Coral, fish and marine mammals aren't the only ones struggling to adapt to oceans warmed by climate change. Humans, too, must rethink life on the open seas -- particularly, their underwater communications strategies.

Scientists with the U.S. Navy and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are working to better understand how changing ocean temperatures will affect sonar technology.

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The Navy uses sound waves to communicate with each other at sea, as well as to detect enemy submarines and to avoid collisions with marine mammals like whales and dolphins.

"[We] haven't had to deal with this issue of climate change until the last 15 years, but the temperature changes are significant enough that it really is having an impact on how sound travels in the ocean," Glen Gawarkiewicz, an oceanographer at WHOI, said in a news release.

With support from the Office of Naval Research, Gawarkiewicz and a team of WHOI researchers have been using a remote control submersible to precisely measure the speed of sound through waters of varying temperature. Sound waves move faster the warmer the water is.

Understanding the precise behavior of sound waves underwater is essential to sending and receiving sonar messages. Ocean waters are becoming warmer, but they're becoming noisier. Detection technologies have to be more precise than ever before to pick out messages among the vibrations of animals, large ships, oil rigs and more.

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Gawarkiewicz presented his research team's latest findings on Wednesday at the 171st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held this week in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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