Greenland landslide unveils climate change's growing impact with mysterious global signal
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In September 2023, scientists tracking seismic activity worldwide detected a mysterious signal that puzzled researchers.
Unlike typical earthquake tremors, this signal, a continuous hum with a consistent frequency, lasted for nine days, echoing across the globe from the Arctic to Antarctica.
Initially dubbed an "unidentified seismic object" (USO), the source was eventually traced to a massive landslide in Greenland's Dickson Fjord.
This landslide, involving an enormous volume of rock and ice - equivalent to filling 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - triggered a mega-tsunami with waves as high as 200 metres, nearly twice the height of London’s Big Ben. The event's seismic impact was strong enough to resonate across the planet.
The landslide's cause was tied to climate change. Decades of glacial thinning near the fjord had weakened the structure, leading to the eventual collapse. The researchers, in a study published in Science, explained that standing waves generated by the rockslide caused the strange global signal.
As Earth's temperatures rise, scientists warn that such catastrophic events, including landslides and tsunamis, may become more frequent in polar regions, highlighting the dangerous feedback loops between the planet's ice, water, and land systems.
