Current-tracking drone subs to help improve climate predictions

The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has announced funding for two projects in collaboration with the US to study the circulation of water in the Atlantic that keep Europe’s climate mild and how it could be affected by changing global temperatures.

One of the projects, known as OSNAP, involves mooring monitoring arrays that reach from the bottom to the surface of the ocean at key points across the northern Atlantic, and sending autonomous underwater gliders to gather data from in between.

Dr Sheldon Bacon of the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton University, who is leading the UK team for OSNAP, said this will help them better understand how geographical features of the seabed affect the currents that transfer heat across the Atlantic.

‘If we want models to represent these processes correctly so that we can have betters projection of future climate, if we want to understand regional details like how Britain is likely to be affected in coming decades, we have to understand these features that affect the decadal variability of the ocean,’ he told The Engineer.