Abu Dhabi: Like India’s experiments on earthquake warning, India and the US are working on a similar joint project to monitor the changes occurring on the earth due to climate change, a senior Indian scientist told Gulf News.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) are working on a project titled Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar (Nisar) mission, said Dr Mylswami Annadurai, director of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) satellite centre in Bengaluru in India.

Nisar mission is scheduled to launch into Earth’s orbit in 2020 to study the consequences of climate change on a highly-detailed scale.

The mission will continuously monitor changes occurring on the Earth’s surface, even ice-sheet movements, Annadurai said.

The entire globe will be monitored in a similar way.

Meanwhile, the Indian Regional Satellite Navigation System (IRNSS), the regional navigation system that India is developing in order to replace the Global Positioning System [GPS], is expected to support India’s experiments on an earthquake forewarning system, he said.

The GPS is a space-based satellite navigation system managed by the United States that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world. It is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.

Isro had said India is developing the IRNSS because access to foreign government-controlled global navigation satellite systems can be restricted and become disturbed in hostile situations. IRNSS is expected to be fully operational soon and will have a constellation of seven satellites, of which four are already placed in orbit.

The IRNSS will provide two services, with the Standard Positioning Service open for civilian use and Restricted Service, an encrypted one, for military use.

The experiments on earthquake forewarning system is important given the recent Nepal earthquakes on April 25 and May 12, which killed at least 8,673 people. The tremors in neighbouring India also killed scores of people. Three mild tremors jolted Nepal on Tuesday, a month after the devastating earthquake. Similar tremors are reported frequently from across the world. A 3.9 magnitude earthquake was recorded near Perry, Oklahoma, in the US on Thursday morning.

No injuries or damage were immediately reported.