Acoustic Sensing of Glacial Discharge in Greenland

Abstract

The accessibility and simplicity of monitoring instruments and processing methods are crucial for environmental monitoring worldwide. There is growing evidence that proglacial discharge may be observed by listening to the glacier terminus using sophisticated tools, such as the micro-barometer arrays that are used for nuclear-test monitoring and the fiber-optic technologies that are becoming increasingly used in geophysics. However, the prohibitive cost, instrumental complexity, overwhelming data volumes, and computational demands of these approaches mean that only the wealthiest countries can afford such technologies. We employ an intentionally inexpensive approach to monitor proglacial discharge by recording the audible sound that is generated near the glacier terminus, and we show that a simple microphone can tell us how much water is discharged by a glacier. This study demonstrates that sound can provide essential information on runoff and therefore contribute to environmental assessments of glaciers and disaster risk reduction of glacial flood events.