Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Underwater ears warn of hurricane strength

New Scientist blog: Hurricanes make themselves heard - even under water. So why not use that sound to safely gauge how destructive a storm will be before it makes landfall?

Joshua Wilson and Nicolas Makris at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reckoned that the frequency of the underwater din of a hurricane whipping up waves might correspond to its intensity. They took recordings made by an underwater listening device called a hydrophone placed on the floor of the mid-Atlantic during hurricane Gert in 1999, and compared these readings with concurrent satellite data and wind speed measurements made by US military aircraft...

Photo of an ear, David Benbennick, Wikimedia Commons

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