Underwater Sound Levels in the Arctic: Filling Knowledge Gaps

Climate change is projected to cause the Arctic soundscape to become noisier due to sea ice loss and increased anthropogenic activity. Many studies on underwater sound levels have been conducted in the western North American Arctic and Fram Strait, but the rest of the Arctic is full of geographic gaps. Han et al. (2021, ) published a study in Geophysical Research Letters on underwater sound levels in the East Siberian Sea, providing the first estimates of seasonal trends and the natural and anthropogenic drivers of underwater sound levels in this region. This is an excellent first step in filling geographic gaps in the Russian Arctic, and I call on other researchers to continue to fill these geographic gaps throughout the Arctic so that we can set a baseline and study changes to underwater sound levels being caused directly and indirectly by climate change.

Automated summary

The article discusses the impact of climate change on the Arctic marine soundscapes, emphasizing the importance of filling geographic gaps and calling on researchers to continue studying the direct and indirect effects of climate change on underwater sound levels to establish a baseline for further research.