THE CSIRO has called in the US Navy to protect its climate change research from pirates. 
 
 A vast section of the Indian Ocean has become too dangerous for scientific vessels because of armed raiders attacking ships off the coast of Somalia. 
 
 It means that the international program for measuring ocean temperature and sea level rise, with robotic buoys, is missing data which would help scientists better understand not only global warming but also Australian weather patterns. 
 
 ''There is a large hole in the area that we can cover, due to the pirates,'' Ann Thresher, a senior scientist in the CSIRO's Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, said. ''We normally deploy the devices off cargo ships, but these vessels are now avoiding the area and sailing along coasts to avoid the pirates.'' 
 
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 After aborted attempts to send a chartered sailing vessel into the pirate zone, an operation to deploy the research buoys from a US Navy warship is now under way. 
 
 The Royal Australian Navy will join the research operation later this year, with an Anzac frigate deploying a series of CSIRO buoys across the Indian Ocean on its way to a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf. 
 
 Pirate attacks have taken place almost every week this year, and last week three accused pirates who had been detained and brought to the US were charged with murder after four people aboard a cruise were killed in February. 
 
 Australian researchers play a central part in the international ocean monitoring effort known as Argo, under which thousands of buoys are deployed around the world. 
 
 The buoys, which cost about $15,000 each, sink to a depth of one or two kilometres, gathering data about water temperature and salinity. They surface every 10 days and broadcast their findings to a satellite, providing updates on currents and weather, as well as changes in ocean chemistry used to measure climate change. 
 
 ''The problem for us is that the floats leak, or they could hit the bottom, or they could get picked up by people, so they have to be replenished if we are going to have broad scale coverage of the ocean,'' Dr Thresher said. 
 
 The pirate danger area, reaching out about 2000 kilometres from the Somali coast, is a key zone for determining Australian weather, Dr Thresher said. 
 
 The Indian Ocean Dipole is a sea temperature oscillation thought to function in a similar way to the El Nino-La Nina oscillation, which was partly responsible for the wild weather that hit the Queensland coast earlier this year. 

 SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Climate scientists have turned to the United States and Australian navies to deploy robotic measuring devices in the Indian Ocean where pirates have made the area too dangerous for researchers. 
 
 About a quarter of the Indian Ocean is now off limits to climate scientists trying to complete a global network of deep ocean devices that gather data crucial to climate change studies and weather forecasts. 
 
 "We can't send anybody in that area. Research voyages have been canceled and I know there's a report of at least one ship that hired an armed escort," said Ann Thresher, an oceanographer with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. 
 
 "That's pretty extreme when you're talking about climate research," she told Reuters from Hobart. 
 
 Thresher said the northwest Indian Ocean played a crucial role in weather patterns in Australia and South Asia, where droughts or floods can cause major disruption to global food prices and trigger large insurance losses. 
 
 In particular, data from the Indian Ocean such as salinity and water temperatures and weather observations from ships were crucial for long-range forecasts. It was crucial to fill the gap, otherwise climate scientists were flying blind, she said. 
 
 "Without those observations, we can't monitor that as accurately. Which means the predictions that scientists make that tell farmers how much rain they are going to get or if there is going to be flooding in Queensland is not as accurate," she said. 
 
 The robotic measuring devices, called Argos, are about two meters (six feet) long and drift between the ocean surface to a depth of about 2,000 meters, before resurfacing to send data via satellite. 
 
 About 3,000 Argos have been deployed globally and about 30 countries contribute to the multi-million dollar program that deploys the $19,000 floats. 
 
 The Argos measure salinity and temperature and the network monitors how the world's oceans, which soak up large amounts of heat, are responding to a warming world. Oceans shift heat around the globe and drive the world's weather. 
 
 The program is heavily reliant on commercial shipping and chartered vessels to deploy Argos globally but the threat from Somali pirates meant navies were the only option this time. 
 
 The devices will be deployed over the next few months in parts of the northwest Indian Ocean. 
 
 (Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
– Scientists have asked the American and Australian navies to help them deploy robots in a vast area of the Indian Ocean that pirates have made too dangerous for ordinary vessels. Deep-ocean robotic buoys play a vital role in climate change studies and weather forecasts, but researchers say pirate activity has left them with a huge blind spot, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "We can't send anybody in that area. Research voyages have been canceled and I know there's a report of at least one ship that hired an armed escort," an Australian oceanographer tells Reuters. "That's pretty extreme when you're talking about climate research."