A Measure of Global Warming by Means of Long Range Underwater Acoustic Propagation Experiments

O'Brien, Jack

A Measure of Global Warming by Means of Long Range Underwater Acoustic Propagation Experiments

1996

New York Institute of Technology

Global warming--Research
Global warming

English

PDF

Thesis (M.S.)--New York Institute of Technology.

School of Engineering and Computing Sciences

Department of Environmental Technology and Sustainability

Stanley M. Greenwald, P.E.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1860, more CO2 has been released into the atmosphere at an ever increasing rate. The theoretical result of this increase in atmospheric CO2 is a temperature increase at the Earth's surface or "global warming", Temperature measurements recorded at over 2000 meteorological stations throughout the world indicate a warming of about 1°c over the last century. Theory indicates a higher rate of warming but this result is difficult to determine by means of atmospheric data and hence the topic of global warming remains controversial. A recently proposed method to determine the extent of global warming is to measure the velocity of sound in the oceans via long range underwater sound propagation experiments. Since sound velocity in the ocean increases by 5 meters per second for a rise in temperature of 1°c, this change could be readily detected. An assessment of this method is the primary topic of this thesis. The conclusion indicates that it will take many years of effort before the extent of global warming is unequivocally determined.