Yellow-coloured missile-shaped underwater robots might finally have a solution to India's water problems. A project headed by a team of scientists from India and the United Kingdom seeks to predict the rainfall with high precision by studying ocean processes in the Bay of Bengal.
The research team will take to the Bay on the Sindhu Sadhana, an Indian research ship, from Chenna on June 24. Once in the ocean, they will send out underwater aquatic robots to test factors like salinity, current and temperature. The robots will send reports to the UK via satellite.
Research results on patterns of Indian monsoon have been scanty, and this project could prove to be a breakthrough, having a wide-ranging impact on agriculture and help authorities reduce the damage caused by flooding.
Lead researcher Prof Adrian Matthews, from the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences said, “The Indian monsoon is notoriously hard to predict. It is a very complicated weather system and the processes are not understood or recorded in science. We will be combining oceanic and atmospheric measurements to monitor weather systems as they are generated. We also hope to better understand how the southern Asian monsoon affects the whole world’s climate."
These deep sea gliders were previously used to find out why the ice caps in the Antarctic were melting.
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