Yahoo News 23 Sep 08;
Thailand and China will sign an agreement this week to launch a three-year study of climatic changes in the Andaman Sea so they can better predict monsoon patterns, an official said Tuesday.
Some experts have blamed global warming for increasingly unpredictable and severe weather in Southeast Asia.
"The aim is to understand the changing of monsoons," said Somkiat Khokiattiwong, a researcher at the Marine Biological Centre in Thailand's southern Phuket island.
"The Andaman is the birthplace of the monsoon. The study may also be able to help us understand cyclone patterns," he told AFP from Phuket.
The two annual monsoons in Thailand have increasingly brought floods and droughts to the kingdom. At least 16 people were killed in Thailand this month after monsoon rain waters swept away thousands of homes.
China will finance the deployment of buoys off the Andaman coast to collect data that will be analysed by scientists from both countries, Somkiat said.
The memorandum of understanding will be signed Friday between his agency and China's First Institute of Oceanography in Beijing.
