Ocean project launched

The international effort towards collecting vital information about climate change and oceanic patterns continued yesterday here on the island, as scientists and researchers from the University of East Anglia and the EUREC4A project launched special sea drones off the coast of the island.

The two drones, which were launched with the help of the Barbados Coast Guard, use a mix of solar, and wind power technology, in order to gather several categories of data, which are vital to the research these scientist need in order to better understand the changes being seen in ocean patterns and the climate on a whole.

Professor Karen Harewood of the University of East Anglia, who is the principal scientist behind the deployment of the drones, gave the press a brief insight into the types of data the team will hope to collect over the next several months.

“They will be measuring temperature and salinity of the ocean, and other meteorological parameters. So surface winds, temperature, humidity and solar radiation. So we are looking at the interaction of the ocean and the atmosphere, and will be studying that over the next few years with the data we collect from this project,” she explained.
Professor Harewood also revealed that though this was the first ever expedition of its kind for the team, they were excited about the work that will be done and look forward to starting similar projects in the future.

“It’s a good expedition for us because there is lots of other ships and instruments around. In the future if this is successful, we then hope to take it to the Antarctic next, so one extreme, to the other,” she stated.

Barbados was an chosen for the launch of the project according to the professor, because of its ideal location in terms of hurricanes and other natural phenomenon.

“Barbados is really interesting for the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere; it’s really important for the people here because of weather forecasting and hurricane forecasting. It’s also important for us as scientists and climate scientists because we want to get all of these processes right in our models, and if we don’t have good measurements to get the ocean and the atmosphere right, then forecasts for the future won’t be right,” she continued.

The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) has also partnered with the scientists to carry out this much needed research, with one of its representatives, Marvin Forde, assuring the public that all important information collected from this project will be made available to Barbados.

“Under the EUREC4A project there is an open data policy. Data will be available almost in real time. Under the ATMONIC (Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign) project there is logistics to be worked out under that project, but data will be available to the scientists,” he stated.