Efforts shower in as India, UK varsity get down to studying monsoon

Scientists will deploy underwater robots to learn ocean conditions in Bay of Bengal

The Government of India and UK's University of East Anglia have decided to collaborate on a £8-million (Rs 76-crore) monsoon project wherein scientists from both the countries will study the conditions in the Bay of Bengal with the help of underwater robots.

The robots placed deep inside the ocean will monitor how conditions influence Indian monsoon, which will help in forecasting the arrival and progress of monsoon more accurately than before.

An understanding of how ocean conditions affect weather patterns is important as the dreaded El Nino weather phenomenon occurs due to abnormal warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean every three to five years.

El Nino is believed to have been a major factor in all the droughts that India faced in the past decade. An accurate monitoring of ocean conditions would also help in better understanding of El Nino and its reverse phenomenon, La Nina.

The four-month southwest monsoon provides around 80 per cent of the total rainfall that India gets in a year. Forecasting the precise timing and location of the rains is vital to India's economy, which is dominated by farming, and for managing its water resources.

Accurate prediction of intense downpours and breaks in the monsoon is essential to help farmers plan their crop planting and to aid communities to prepare for floods and droughts. In 2013, the monsoon spread rapidly over northern India, causing devastating damage, whereas prolonged breaks in 2009 led to shortage of rainfall and poor harvests. "The Indian monsoon is notoriously hard to predict. We will be combining oceanic and atmospheric measurements to monitor weather systems as they are generated. Nobody has ever made observations on this scale during the monsoon season itself so this is a truly groundbreaking project," said Adrian Matthews, lead researcher in University of East Anglia's school of environmental sciences.

The Bay of Bengal Boundary Layer Experiment is led by University of East Anglia scientists in collaboration with the University of Reading and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Collaborators in India include the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian National Centre for Climate Information Services, National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting and the National Institute of Ocean Technology.

Once out in the ocean, they will, then, release seven underwater gliders to measure ocean properties such as temperature, salinity and currents.

The team will spend a month at sea - with data from the 250-mile stretch of international water beamed back to the UK using mobile phone signals daily.

CRUISING INTO THE FUTURE

• India and University of East Anglia to collaborate on studying ocean process in Bay of Bengal
   
• The study will be done through many underwater robots
   
• The study will help in making accurate and timely prediction of monsoon arrival
   
• An accurate monitoring of oceans could also help in predicting the impact of El Nino on Indian monsoon
   
• A team of scientists would spend a month on the seas to collect relevant data