{"id":29506,"date":"2025-06-12T09:02:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T09:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29506"},"modified":"2025-06-12T09:25:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T09:25:28","slug":"climate-change-could-complicate-anti-submarine-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29506","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Could Complicate Anti-Submarine Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sound is the primary means of tracking subs in vast ocean expanses, and research shows that it\u2019s behaving differently as the seas warm.<\/p>\n

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Submarines are among the most advanced and deadly weapons systems in the world. Armed with torpedoes, cruise missiles and sometimes intercontinental ballistic missiles, they\u2019re capable of operating deep below the surface for months at a time and are notoriously hard to detect.<\/p>\n

Now, their ability to hide in the vast oceans may be getting a boost from an unlikely source: climate change.<\/p>\n

The waters where many submarines lurk have been quickly warming, as humans pump out greenhouse gasses and oceans absorb the excess heat that gets trapped in the atmosphere. And that warming, according to a recent paper produced by the NATO Defense College<\/a> in Rome, can have a powerful effect on how sound, the primary means of detecting submarines, behaves underwater.<\/p>\n

It could make large areas of the oceans impenetrable to submarine hunters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe observed, in most areas that we looked at, a reduction in the range of detection,\u201d said Mauro Gilli, a researcher who studies military technology. His team modeled the way sound waves moved through the depths from 1970 to 1999. And they compared it with the way current climate modeling predicts they will move between 2070 and 2099. There were significant differences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The researchers found that in the North Atlantic, where Russian submarines play cat and mouse with NATO forces, the distances at which they can be heard will shrink significantly. This could be by almost half in the Bay of Biscay, off the coasts of France and Spain. There were similar dynamics in play in the western Pacific, where Chinese and American submarines operate and where detection ranges could shrink by up to 20 percent.<\/p>\n

The underlying science has been well understood since before World War II, when scientists discovered that sound, which travels faster through warmer water, tends to bend toward cooler layers, where it moves more slowly.<\/p>\n

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Sound is the primary means of tracking subs in vast ocean expanses, and research shows that it\u2019s behaving differently as the seas warm.Submarines are among the most advanced and deadly weapons systems in the world. Armed with torpedoes, cruise missiles and sometimes intercontinental ballistic missiles, they\u2019re capable of operating deep below the surface for months at a time and are notoriously hard to detect.Now, their ability to hide in the vast oceans may be getting a boost from an unlikely source: climate change.The waters where many submarines lurk have been quickly warming, as humans pump out greenhouse gasses and oceans absorb the excess heat that gets trapped in the atmosphere. And that warming, according to a recent paper produced by the NATO Defense College in Rome, can have a powerful effect on how sound, the primary means of detecting submarines, behaves underwater.It could make large areas of the oceans impenetrable to submarine hunters.\u201cWe observed, in most areas that we looked at, a reduction in the range of detection,\u201d said Mauro Gilli, a researcher who studies military technology. His team modeled the way sound waves moved through the depths from 1970 to 1999. And they compared it with the way current climate modeling predicts they will move between 2070 and 2099. There were significant differences.The researchers found that in the North Atlantic, where Russian submarines play cat and mouse with NATO forces, the distances at which they can be heard will shrink significantly. This could be by almost half in the Bay of Biscay, off the coasts of France and Spain. There were similar dynamics in play in the western Pacific, where Chinese and American submarines operate and where detection ranges could shrink by up to 20 percent.The underlying science has been well understood since before World War II, when scientists discovered that sound, which travels faster through warmer water, tends to bend toward cooler layers, where it moves more slowly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29508,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29509,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29506\/revisions\/29509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}