Heat waves becoming more prominent in urban areas, research reveals

Prolonged periods of extreme heat increased significantly between 1973 and 2012 in almost half of the urban areas the researchers analyzed. Credit: Ucla

The frequency of heat waves has increased dramatically over the past 40 years, and the trend appears to be growing faster in urban areas than in less-populated areas around the world, a new study suggests.

“Our findings suggest that urban areas are experiencing a kind of double whammy — a combination of general climatic warming combined with the heat island effect, wherein human activities and the built environment trap heat, preventing cities from cooling down as fast as rural areas,” said Dennis Lettenmaier, a co-author of the study and a UCLA geography professor. “Everything’s warming up, but the effect is amplified in urban areas.”

Lettenmaier and his co-authors studied 217 urban areas across the globe and found that prolonged periods of extreme heat increased significantly in 48 percent of them between 1973 and 2012.

The results, which were published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, show that about only 2 percent of those urban areas experienced a significant decline in heat waves. And the change was more dramatic at night: Almost two-thirds of the urban areas showed significant increases in the frequency of extremely hot nights.

“The fact that the trend was so much stronger at night underscores the role of the heat island effect in urban areas,” Lettenmaier said. “You have heat being stored in buildings and in asphalt, concrete and other building materials, and they don’t cool down as quickly as they would outside of the urban area. This effect was likely exacerbated by decreasing wind in most of the urban areas.”

The study is one of the first to focus solely on the extent of extreme weather in urban areas globally and to examine disparities between densely populated and less-densely populated areas.

Lettenmaier collaborated with researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Northeastern University and the University of Washington. The team obtained daily observations for rain, air temperature and wind speed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The researchers identified about 650 urban areas with populations greater than 250,000 and then refined the list to the 217 locales based on the areas’ proximity to weather stations with complete weather records and NOAA data — most were located at airports close to urban areas. Although the researchers would have liked to have more data for urban areas in Africa, Lettenmaier said the report provides as close as possible to a representative sample of changing weather conditions in the world’s cities. 

For each of the locales in the study, the researchers identified extremes for temperature, precipitation and wind, calculated heat and cold waves, and pinpointed individual extremely hot days and nights.

The study defined heat waves as periods in which the daily maximum temperature was hotter than 99 percent of days for the four-decade period and in which those temperatures were sustained for a consecutive period of six or more days. (The median length of heat waves was eight days.) It found that the average number of heat waves per year increased by over 50 percent during the period.

Of the five years with the largest number of heat waves, four were the most recent years for which data was available: 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Urban areas in South America experienced the greatest increase in frequency of heat waves, followed in order by those in Africa, Europe, India and North America.

Researchers also found other striking examples of climate change within urban settings. Sixty percent experienced a significant decline in extreme windy days, 17 percent experienced a significant increase in daily precipitation extremes, and 10 percent experienced a significant increase in maximum annual precipitation.

“Urban areas make up a relatively small part of the global land area, but over half the world’s populations now live in them, so the trend is troublesome,” said lead author Vimal Mishra, an assistant professor of civil engineering at IIT Gandhinagar. “The combination of higher temperatures and lower wind in particular is not a good combination for human health and well-being. This should concern everyone.”

The increase in precipitation could damage cities’ infrastructure, which could also mean large economic losses, Mishra said.

Using a separate data set of 142 pairs of urban and non-urban areas, the researchers found that the frequency of heat waves grew 56 percent more quickly in urban settings than in surrounding areas that were less populated. Urban areas experienced 60 percent fewer extremely windy days than non-urban areas.

“In urban areas, buildings are disrupting the air flow, which affects not only the immediate area of buildings, but apparently the larger regional wind fields,” Lettenmaier said. “The reduction in wind may well be exacerbating the heat island effect.” 

Source: UCLA

Study Yields Surprising Insights into Global Effects of Wood Fuel Burning

Courtesy of Adrian Ghilardi

The harvesting of wood to meet the heating and cooking demands for billions of people worldwide has less of an impact on global forest loss and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than previously believed, according to a new Yale-led study.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, a team of researchers, including Prof. Robert Bailis of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES), concludes that only about 27 to 34 percent of wood fuel harvested worldwide would be considered “unsustainable.” According to the assessment, “sustainability” is based on whether or not annual harvesting exceeds incremental re-growth.

The other authors are Rudi Drigo, an independent forestry specialist with international experience; and Adrian Ghilardi and Omar Masera of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

According to the authors, the findings point to the need for more nuanced, local-specific policies that address forest loss, climate change, and public health. They also suggest that existing carbon offset methodologies used to reduce carbon emissions likely overstate the CO2 emission reductions that can be achieved through the promotion of more efficient cookstove technologies.

The study identifies a set of “hotspots” where the majority of wood extraction exceeds sustainable yields. These hotspot regions — located mainly in South Asia and East Africa — support about 275 million people who are reliant on wood fuel.

“If forests and woodlands would have been cut down anyway, then the projects designed to reduce wood fuel demand are not actually going to reduce deforestation.”— Robert Bailis

However, in other regions, the authors say, much of the wood used for this traditional heating and cooking is actually the byproduct of deforestation driven by other factors, such as demand for agricultural land, which would have occurred anyway.

“If forests and woodlands would have been cut down anyway, then the projects designed to reduce wood fuel demand are not actually going to reduce deforestation,” said Bailis, an associate professor at F&ES and lead author of the study. “Sure, you’re reducing wood use, but the underlying pressures driving deforestation are still out there.”

The results stand in contrast to a long-held assumption that the harvesting of wood fuels — which accounts for more than half of the wood harvested worldwide — is a major driver of deforestation and climate change.
  
Using a model originally developed by Drigo and Masera, and already applied in more than 20 countries, the researchers produce a spatially explicit snapshot of wood fuel supply and demand in 90 countries across the world’s tropical regions, where burning wood is a critical source of energy for cooking and heating.

“One of the problems with traditional bio-energy is that the situation is very locally specific, so you can’t come up with a general response for all places,” said Masera. “One of the real strengths of this paper is that it demonstrates a methodology that allows you to identify priority regions for intervention”

The study identified a set of “hotspot” regions in South Asia and Eastern Africa where the majority of wood extraction exceeds sustainable yields.

In addition to the global analysis, the researchers are using the same model to evaluate the sustainability of wood fuel resources in three case studies: Honduras, Kenya, and the Indian state of Karnataka.

“Even within a given country the situation varies a great deal,” said Drigo. “Some areas are over-exploited while others are under-exploited or totally untouched. A better understanding of the relationship between supply and demand requires this type of spatial approach to clarify what the impacts of different policies will be.”

Emissions from wood fuels account for about 1.9 to 2.3 percent of global emissions, the study says. The deployment of 100 million improved cookstoves could reduce this by 11 to 17 percent, said Bailis, who also studies the factors that influence the adoption of cleaner cookstoves in developing nations.

These reductions would be worth more than $1 billion per year in avoided greenhouse gas emissions if black carbon were integrated into carbon markets, he said.

“We need to be able to understand where these different components of non-renewability are coming from in order to get a better sense of the positive impacts of putting stoves into peoples' homes or promoting transitions to cooking with gas or electricity,” he said.

The research was funded by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative supported by the UN Foundation.

Source: Yale University

Earthquakes in the ocean: Towards a better understanding of their precursors

Published on 14 September in Nature Geoscience, the study conducted by researchers from several institutes, including IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea), CNRS and IFSTTAR, offers the first theoretical model that, based on fluid-related processes, explains the seismic precursors of an underwater earthquake. Using quantitative measurements, this innovative model established a link between observed precursors and the mainshock of an earthquake. The results open a promising avenue of research for guiding future investigations on detecting earthquakes before they strike.

A model specific to the submarine environment

The data used to construct the model presented in the article were collected from subsea observatories* deployed in the North-East Pacific fracture zones.

The researchers showed that the properties of the fluids that circulate in submarine fault zones change over time, during what is called the “seismic cycle”. This term describes the cycle during which strain accumulates along a fault until it exceeds the frictional forces that prevent the fault from slipping. An earthquake results at the moment of rupture, due to the sudden release of built-up strain. A new cycle begins with strain accumulating and continues until the next rupture occurs along the fault...

Due to their proximity to mid-ocean ridges, the fluids that circulate in the faults undergo tremendous pressure and extremely high temperatures. These fluids can reach the supercritical state. The physical properties of supercritical fluids (density, viscosity, diffusivity) are intermediate to those of liquids and gases.

The compressibility of supercritical fluid varies greatly with pressure, and, according to the study’s analysis, this change in compressibility may trigger an earthquake, occurring after a short period of foreshocks.

Seismic precursors
Seismic precursors are the early warning signs before an earthquake strikes. Many different types of earthquake precursors have been studied by the scientific community: ground movements, seismic signals, fluid or gas emissions, electrical signals, thermal signals, animal behaviour, etc.
For an event as large as an earthquake, which releases a considerable amount of energy, there must be a preparatory phase. This problem in predicting earthquakes does not lie in the absence of precursors (hindsight observations are numerous), but in the capacity to detect these forerunners before the mainshock.

The results of the model can help guide future research in the detection of seismic precursors with, ultimately, potential applications for earthquake prediction. Supercritical fluids require very specific conditions; they are also encountered on land in hydrothermal and volcanic areas, such as Iceland.

Details of the model
Under the effect of tectonic forces, two antagonistic effects are usually in play near transform faults. First, increasing shear stress tends to break rocks and weaken resistance in the transform fault. Second, decreasing pressure of the fluid contained in the fault results in an increase in the volume of the pore space between rock beds. This effect acts as a stabilising suction cup, counterbalancing the ‘weakening’ in the rock bed and delaying the triggering of an earthquake.

The efficiency of this counterbalancing mechanism depends on fluid compressibility. It is highest in the presence of fluids in the liquid state, whose low compressibility causes a dramatic decrease in fluid pressure in response to small increases in volume. Conversely, for gas-type fluids, which are highly compressible, the suction cup effect is nearly inexistent.

When a change in the ‘liquid-gas’ state of the fluid occurs during a fault slip, the counterbalancing mechanism fails, allowing a major shock to be triggered. This transition occurs over several days and has numerous signs, including many small foreshocks.

*Subsea observatories are comparable to a laboratory on the seafloor. Equipped with a series of instruments, they record many types of data that can be used to study the geophysical events that occur in the ocean.

Source: Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (Ifremer)

The Wastewater injection is culprit for most earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, study finds

The deep injection of wastewater underground is responsible for the dramatic rise in the number of earthquakes in Colorado and New Mexico since 2001, according to a study to be published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).


The Raton Basin, which stretches from southern Colorado into northern New Mexico, was seismically quiet until shortly after major fluid injection began in 1999. Since 2001, there have been 16 magnitude > 3.8 earthquakes (including M 5.0 and 5.3), compared to only one (M 4.0) the previous 30 years. The increase in earthquakes is limited to the area of industrial activity and within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of wastewater injection wells.

In 1994, energy companies began producing coal-bed methane in Colorado and expanded production to New Mexico in 1999. Along with the production of methane, there is the production of wastewater, which is injected underground in disposal wells and can raise the pore pressure in the surrounding area, inducing earthquakes. Several lines of evidence suggest the earthquakes in the area are directly related to the disposal of wastewater, a by-product of extracting methane, and not to hydraulic fracturing occurring in the area.

Beginning in 2001, the production of methane expanded, with the number of high-volume wastewater disposal wells increasing (21 presently in Colorado and 7 in New Mexico) along with the injection rate. Since mid-2000, the total injection rate across the basin has ranged from 1.5 to 3.6 million barrels per month.

The authors, all scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, detail several lines of evidence directly linking the injection wells to the seismicity. The timing and location of seismicity correspond to the documented pattern of injected wastewater. Detailed investigations of two seismic sequences (2001 and 2011) places them in proximity to high-volume, high-injection-rate wells, and both sequences occurred after a nearby increase in the rate of injection. A comparison between seismicity and wastewater injection in Colorado and New Mexico reveals similar patterns, suggesting seismicity is initiated shortly after an increase in injection rates.

Source: Seismological Society of America

The Major earthquake may occur off coast of Istanbul, seismic shifts suggest

When a segment of a major fault line goes quiet, it can mean one of two things: The "seismic gap" may simply be inactive -- the result of two tectonic plates placidly gliding past each other -- or the segment may be a source of potential earthquakes, quietly building tension over decades until an inevitable seismic release.

Researchers from MIT and Turkey have found evidence for both types of behavior on different segments of the North Anatolian Fault -- one of the most energetic earthquake zones in the world. The fault, similar in scale to California's San Andreas Fault, stretches for about 745 miles across northern Turkey and into the Aegean Sea.

The researchers analyzed 20 years of GPS data along the fault, and determined that the next large earthquake to strike the region will likely occur along a seismic gap beneath the Sea of Marmara, some five miles west of Istanbul. In contrast, the western segment of the seismic gap appears to be moving without producing large earthquakes.

"Istanbul is a large city, and many of the buildings are very old and not built to the highest modern standards compared to, say, southern California," says Michael Floyd, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. "From an earthquake scientist's perspective, this is a hotspot for potential seismic hazards."

Although it's impossible to pinpoint when such a quake might occur, Floyd says this one could be powerful -- on the order of a magnitude 7 temblor, or stronger.

"When people talk about when the next quake will be, what they're really asking is, 'When will it be, to within a few hours, so that I can evacuate?' But earthquakes can't be predicted that way," Floyd says. "Ultimately, for people's safety, we encourage them to be prepared. To be prepared, they need to know what to prepare for -- that's where our work can contribute"

Floyd and his colleagues, including Semih Ergintav of the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in Istanbul and MIT research scientist Robert Reilinger, have published their seismic analysis in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

In recent decades, major earthquakes have occurred along the North Anatolian Fault in a roughly domino-like fashion, breaking sequentially from east to west. The most recent quake occurred in 1999 in the city of Izmit, just east of Istanbul. The initial shock, which lasted less than a minute, killed thousands. As Istanbul sits at the fault's western end, many scientists have thought the city will be near the epicenter of the next major quake.

To get an idea of exactly where the fault may fracture next, the MIT and Turkish researchers used GPS data to measure the region's ground movement over the last 20 years. The group took data along the fault from about 100 GPS locations, including stations where data are collected continuously and sites where instruments are episodically set up over small markers on the ground, the positions of which can be recorded over time as the Earth slowly shifts.

"By continuously tracking, we can tell which parts of the Earth's crust are moving relative to other parts, and we can see that this fault has relative motion across it at about the rate at which your fingernail grows," Floyd says.

From their ground data, the researchers estimate that, for the most part, the North Anatolian Fault must move at about 25 millimeters -- or one inch -- per year, sliding quietly or slipping in a series of earthquakes.

As there's currently no way to track the Earth's movement offshore, the group also used fault models to estimate the motion off the Turkish coast. The team identified a segment of the fault under the Sea of Marmara, west of Istanbul, that is essentially stuck, with the "missing" slip accumulating at 10 to 15 millimeters per year. This section -- called the Princes' Island segment, for a nearby tourist destination -- last experienced an earthquake 250 years ago.

Floyd and colleagues calculate that the Princes' Island segment should have slipped about 8 to 11 feet -- but it hasn't. Instead, strain has likely been building along the segment for the last 250 years. If this tension were to break the fault in one cataclysmic earthquake, the Earth could shift by as much as 11 feet within seconds.

Although such accumulated strain may be released in a series of smaller, less hazardous rumbles, Floyd says that given the historical pattern of major quakes along the North Anatolian Fault, it would be reasonable to expect a large earthquake off the coast of Istanbul within the next few decades.

"Earthquakes are not regular or predictable," Floyd says. "They're far more random over the long run, and you can go many lifetimes without experiencing one. But it only takes one to affect many lives. In a location like Istanbul that is known to be subject to large earthquakes, it comes back to the message: Always be prepared."

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Deep Earth recycling of the oceanic floor: New insight into the temperature of deep Earth

Scientists from the Magma and Volcanoes Laboratory (CNRS/IRD/Université Blaise Pascal) and the European Synchrotron, the ESRF, have recreated the extreme conditions 600 to 2900 km below Earth's surface to investigate the melting of basalt in the oceanic tectonic plates. They exposed microscopic pieces of rock to these extreme pressures and temperatures while simultaneously studying their structure with the ESRF's extremely powerful X-ray beam. The results show that basalt produced on the ocean floor has a melting temperature lower than the peridotite which forms Earth's mantle. Near the core-mantle boundary, where the temperature rises rapidly, the melting basalt produces liquids rich in silica (SiO2), which react rapidly with the mantle and indicate a speedy dissolution of the basalt back into the depths of the Earth. These experiments provide a new explanation for seismic anomalies at the base of the mantle while fixing its temperature in the region of 4000 K. The results are published in Science on the 23 May 2014.

Earth is an active planet. The heat it contains is capable of inducing the mantle convection responsible for plate tectonics. This energy comes from the heat accumulated during the formation of our planet, the latent heat of crystallization of the inner core, and radioactive decay. The temperatures inside Earth, however, are not well known.

Convection causes hot material to rise to the surface of Earth and cold material to sink towards the core. Thus, when the ascending mantle begins to melt at the base of the oceanic ridges, the basalt flows along the surface to form what we call the oceanic crust. "Over the course of millennia the crust will then undergo subduction, its greater density causing it to sink into the mantle. This is why Earth's continents are known to be several billion years old, while the oldest oceanic crust only dates back 165 million years" said Mohamed Mezouar, scientist at the ESRF.

The temperature at the core-mantle boundary (also known as the D" region) is thought to increase by more than 1000 degrees over a few hundred kilometers, which is significant compared to the temperature gradient across the rest of the mantle. Previous authors have suggested that this temperature rise could cause the partial melting of the mantle, but this hypothesis leaves a number of geophysical observations unexplained. Firstly, the anomalies in the propagation speed of seismic waves do not match those expected for a partial melting of the mantle, and secondly, the melting mantle should lead to the production of liquid pockets in the lowermost mantle, a phenomenon which has never been observed.

The team led by Professor Denis Andrault from the Université Blaise Pascal decided instead to study the melting point of basalt at high depths, and found that it was significantly lower than that of the mantle. The melting of sub-oceanic basalt piles could therefore be responsible for the previously unexplained seismic anomalies. The researchers also showed that the melting basalt generates a liquid rich in SiO2. As the mantle itself contains large quantities of MgO, the interaction of these liquids with the mantle is expected to produce a rapid reaction leading to the formation of the solid MgSiO3 perovskite. This would explain why no liquid pockets have been detected by seismologists in the deep mantle: any streams of liquid should rapidly re-solidify.

If it is indeed the basalt and not the mantle whose melting in the D"-region is responsible for the observed seismic anomalies, then the temperature at the core-mantle boundary must be between 3800 and 4150 Kelvin, between the melting points of basalt and Earth's mantle. If this hypothesis is correct, this would be the most accurate determination of the temperature at the core-mantle boundary available today.

"It could solve a long time controversy about the peculiar role of the core-mantle boundary in the dynamical properties of the Earth mantle, said Professor Denis Andrault. ''We know now that the cycle of crust formation at the mid-ocean ridges and crust dissolution in the lowermost mantle may have occured since plate tectonics were active on our planet'', he added.

Source: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

The New insight may help predict volcanic eruption behavior

Using friction experiments University of Liverpool scientists have shown that frictional melting plays a role in determining how a volcano will erupt. Credit: Dr. Jackie Kendrick

A new discovery in the study of how lava dome volcanoes erupt may help in the development of methods to predict how a volcanic eruption will behave, say scientists at the University of Liverpool.

Volcanologists at the University have discovered that a process called frictional melting plays a role in determining how a volcano will erupt, by dictating how fast magma can ascend to the surface, and how much resistance it faces en-route.

The process occurs in lava dome volcanoes when magma and rocks melt as they rub against each other due to intense heat. This creates a stop start movement in the magma as it makes its way towards Earth's surface. The magma sticks to the rock and stops moving until enough pressure builds up, prompting it to shift forward again (a process called stick-slip).

Volcanologist, Dr Jackie Kendrick, who lead the research said: "Seismologists have long known that frictional melting takes place when large tectonic earthquakes occur. It is also thought that the stick-slip process that frictional melting generates is concurrent to 'seismic drumbeats' which are the regular, rhythmic small earthquakes which have been recently found to accompany large volcanic eruptions.
"Using friction experiments we have shown that the extent of frictional melting depends on the composition of the rock and magma, which determines how fast or slow the magma travels to the surface during the eruption."

Analysis of lava collected from Mount St. Helens, USA and the Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat by volcanology researchers from the University's School of Environmental Sciences revealed remnants of pseudotachylyte, a cooled frictional melt. Evidence showed that the process took place in the conduit, the channel which lava passes through on its way to erupt.

Dr Kendrick, from the University's School of Environmental Sciences, added: "The closer we get to understanding the way magma behaves, the closer we will get to the ultimate goal: predicting volcanic activity when unrest begins. Whilst we can reasonably predict when a volcanic eruption is about to happen, this new knowledge will help us to predict how the eruption will behave.

"With a rapidly growing population inhabiting the flanks of active volcanoes, understanding the behaviour of lava domes becomes an increasing challenge for volcanologists."

Source: University of Liverpool

The Network for tracking earthquakes exposes glacier activity: Accidental find offers big potential for research on Alaska's glaciers

Alaska’s seismic network records thousands of quakes produced by glaciers, capturing valuable data that scientis ts could use to better understand their behavior, but instead their seismic signals are set aside as oddities. The current earthquake monitoring system could be “tweaked” to target the dynamic movement of the state’s glaciers.
Credit: Chris Larson

Alaska's seismic network records thousands of quakes produced by glaciers, capturing valuable data that scientists could use to better understand their behavior, but instead their seismic signals are set aside as oddities. The current earthquake monitoring system could be "tweaked" to target the dynamic movement of the state's glaciers, suggests State Seismologist Michael West, who will present his research today at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America (SSA).

"In Alaska, these glacial events have been largely treated as a curiosity, a by-product of earthquake monitoring," said West, director of the Alaska Earthquake Center, which is responsible for detecting and reporting seismic activity across Alaska.

The Alaska seismic network was upgraded in 2007-08, improving its ability to record and track glacial events. "As we look across Alaska's glacial landscape and comb through the seismic record, there are thousands of these glacial events. We see patterns in the recorded data that raise some interesting questions about the glaciers," said West.

As a glacier loses large pieces of ice on its leading edge, a process called calving, the Alaska Earthquake Center's monitoring system automatically records the event as an earthquake. Analysts filter out these signals in order to have a clear record of earthquake activity for the region. In the discarded data, West sees opportunity.

"We have amassed a large record of glacial events by accident," said West. "The seismic network can act as an objective tool for monitoring glaciers, operating 24/7 and creating a data flow that can alert us to dynamic changes in the glaciers as they are happening." It's when a glacier is perturbed or changing in some way, says West, that the scientific community can learn the most.

Since 2007, the Alaska Earthquake Center has recorded more than 2800 glacial events along 600 km of Alaska's coastal mountains. The equivalent earthquake sizes for these events range from about 1 to 3 on the local magnitude scale. While calving accounts for a significant number of the recorded quakes, each glacier's terminus -- the end of any glacier where the ice meets the ocean -- behaves differently. Seasonal variations in weather cause glaciers to move faster or slower, creating an expected seasonal cycle in seismic activity. But West and his colleagues have found surprises, too.

In mid-August 2010, the Columbia Glacier's seismic activity changed radically from being relatively quiet to noisy, producing some 400 quakes to date. These types of signals from the Columbia Glacier have been documented every single month since August 2010, about the time when the Columbia terminus became grounded on sill, stalling its multi-year retreat.

That experience highlighted for West the value of the accidental data trove collected by the Alaska Earthquake Center. "The seismic network is blind to the cause of the seismic events, cataloguing observations that can then be validated," said West, who suggests the data may add value to ongoing field studies in Alaska.

Many studies of Alaska's glaciers have focused on single glacier analyses with dedicated field campaigns over short periods of time and have not tracked the entire glacier complex over the course of years. West suggests leveraging the data stream may help the scientific community observe the entire glacier complex in action or highlight in real time where scientists could look to catch changes in a glacier.

"This is low-hanging fruit," said West of the scientific advances waiting to be gleaned from the data.

Source: Seismological Society of America