A monitoring apparatus for detecting uncharacteristic short-term power level changes of an optical signal transmitted through an optical fiber, said monitoring apparatus comprising a power level variance calculation unit adapted to calculate a power level variance on the basis of a long-term power level and a current power level of said optical signal and a short-term variance filter adapted to filter transient changes indicated by the calculated power level variance and to generate a trouble occurrence indication indicating an uncharacteristic short-term power level change, if the filtered power level variance exceeds a predetermined power level variance.