This Global Composite SST image from 1992 shows the Bay of Bengal in early summer when the water is the hottest. This is where satellites enter the picture. It's easy enough to measure sea- surface temperature via satellite. But there's more. The cholera bacterium spends a good part of its life attached to a floating animal called a copepod.
Copepods feed on free-floating plants, which contain chlorophyll.
Satellites, it turns out, can measure chlorophyll rather easily. That prediction would become an early warning to public health authorities that cholera was again on the march. Promising predictions Satellites can add another piece of data to the mix by measuring sea surface levels. When the sea rises, it pushes water higher into the flat, intensely populated delta of Bangladesh. From there, the response may shift to the low- tech direction of appropriate technology.