STUDENT 2: You say you're building models of theworld's ocean systems but how're they going to beused,and more importantly,when?
SIMON: Some of the data has already helped incompleting projects.For example,our understandingof the underlying causes of E1 Nino events is beingconfirmed by float data.Another way we're usingfloat data is to help us to understand themechanics of climate change,like global warmingand ozone depletion.That's part of an ongoingvariability study but the results are still a long wayoff.However,this is not the case with our ocean weather forecasting.Because we know from thefloats what the prevailing weather conditions will be in certain parts of the ocean,we canadvise the navy on search and rescue missions.That's happening right now and manyyachtsmen owe their lives to the success of this project.In addition,the float data can help usto look at the biological implications of ocean processes.
