Closing the gap in our view of Earth's rising coastal seas
For decades, a stubborn observational gap has existed in our ability to monitor coastal sea levels. This video explores how the SWOT satellite mission is using unprecedented high-resolution data to capture the complex topography of our oceans and freshwater systems like never before.
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a collaboration between NASA, CNES, CSA, and the UK Space Agency, provides a detailed view of Earth's surface water. While satellite altimeters have improved from 300 km scales in the 1990s to roughly 100 km today, SWOT's Ka-band Interferometer altimeters allow scientists to observe sea surface height at resolutions below 10 km between 78°S and 78°N.
By capturing fine-scale features, the mission helps monitor the vertical transport of heat and carbon, as well as coastal flooding. The data reveals how the ocean surface reacts to tides, waves, and currents. This level of detail is essential for studying global climate changes and the movement of nutrients and marine debris through ocean eddies, features that traditional altimeters like Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich cannot capture at this scale.
Source: Seeing Earth’s Coastlines: SWOT Satellite Provides Higher-Resolution Data than Ever Before
