Subsea cables wanted for climate change research

A university researcher has called for telecommunications operators to offer up their subsea cable infrastructure to help with climate monitoring. John Yuzhu You, a scientist at Sydney University, says that submarine cables laying at the bottom of the sea can help climate change scientist monitor key changes in world’s environment, including ocean currents, salinity, seismology and sea temperatures.

According to this report from ITNews in Australia, devices called, Voltmetres, can be installed in cable landing stations that can measure the electromagnetic current created by water moving around a subsea cable.

“Only a tiny fraction of the existing undersea cabling is used for scientific purposes … this is a missed opportunity,” You said in the news report. “To monitor climate change, [researchers] need continuity, but there are also funding limitations.”

So far, the telecoms industry has been very generous in allowing the scientific community access to their equipment, as long as they don’t disrupt telecoms services, You said. He added however that there is also a business opportunity for telcos.

“There is actually business [for telcos] to do – they can actually make additional money selling data to scientists,” he said. “My intention is to inform them they can make some money here, and they cannot say that climate change has nothing to do with them.”

You is part of a group of scientist studying the Indonesian Throughflow, a current that flows between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

The report further noted that the group received endorsement from SingTel and Telstra to use their cables for the project. The goal of the group is to set up a global monitoring network with the technology.

The group also wants telecoms operators to make retired cables available for scientific research. These can be reengineered for scientific instrumentation, or or moved to strategic locations around the world for such a purpose, You said.

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Tags: Climate change, Climate change research, climate science, global warming, green telecom, SingTel, submarine cable, subsea cable, Telstra

Category: Climate change, Green corporations, Networks