The natural world is falling silent

We have triggered animal extinctions and climate change, and both have altered the way our world sounds

You can hear the climate changing. As the world warms, the soundtrack of the ocean is shifting.

In 2015, a US team of scientists and engineers reported that the loudest sound in some waters now comes from millions of tiny bubbles, which are released by melting glaciers and icebergs.

In the fjords of Alaska and Antarctica, the average noise level is now over 100 decibels - louder than any ocean environment recorded before.

This is just one example of how Earth's natural soundscape is changing irreversibly, and human activity is driving the process.

Our natural spaces are now polluted with human-made noises.

As we change forests into farms and drive species to extinction, we are fundamentally changing how our world sounds.

The phenomenon has inspired a new field of research, which aims to monitor the changing melody of our natural spaces.

These acoustic studies could revolutionise the way we study whole ecosystems, from forests to coral reefs.

All the sounds of an ecosystem - from trickling streams to singing birds - add together to form a unique soundscape; a fingerprint of the habitat in its current state.

Studying a soundscape is a quick and easy way to get an overview of the health of a habitat.

But what scientists are hearing is not good. Some soundscapes are deteriorating in an alarming way.

Oceans in particular now sound very different. As the noise from melting glaciers rises, the sound produced by some marine species is falling.

For as long as biologists have been studying the seas, snapping shrimps have been creating a din. Each snapping shrimp has an asymmetrical, oversized claw, which it can snap shut at up to 60mph.

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