Now scientists are planning high-tech devices – like floating robots — to monitor data including climate change, ocean temperatures and other weather forecasting.
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) aims to fill the world’s oceans with weather sensing floating robots. 60 international groups are involved in this Argo project. Australia has deployed 105 floats till date and is preparing with 50 more for the next year!
According to the Australian Argo project leader, Dr Susan Wijffels, the floats – presently numbering more than 2,500 — are producing valuable information. Data from the floats provides new things about the concerned ocean basins, how they affect our climate, and those we really never been able to see before.
Basically very, very simple robots, they drift at about one kilometer depth below the ocean surface, switches on every 10 days, slowly rising to the ocean surface. And, while rising up, they take estimates of temperature measurements, salinity and the pressure. Getting to the surface, they feed information to the satellite providing their positions’ data to the researchers.
But, until now these robots could provide very little information on the heat trapped in oceans. Scientists are optimistically keeping their fingers crossed.
