Researchers discovered that when a 1.2 km (0.7 mi) high mountain top collapsed in September of last year, the water in the fjord below began to splash back and forth, sending vibrations through to the Earth’s bedrock.
The study, which involved experts from University College London (UCL), concluded that it was caused by the glacier at the foot of the mountain receding, which was the effect of climate change.
Scientists were “completely baffled” by the unusual phenomena, which started above Dickson Fjord in east Greenland, according to research co-author Dr. Stephen Hicks.
This is the first instance of water sloshing being captured as vibrations that propagate through the crust of the Earth.
Seismometers are known to capture a wide range of events occurring on the surface of the Earth, but no one has ever documented a seismic wave as long-lasting, traveling worldwide, and consisting just of one oscillation frequency.
The complex relationships between climate change in the atmosphere, the destabilization of glacier ice in the cryosphere, the motions of water bodies in the hydrosphere, and the solid Earth’s crust in the lithosphere are astoundingly highlighted by our research on this event.
