Climate change and the global water cycle

a Satellites The $1.2 billion Surface Walter and Ocean Topography (SWOT), launched by NASA, aims to give scientists a new window on climate change and the global water cycle.

So, let’s talk about some of the data that the SWOT satellite will provide to science, thus contributing to the progress of river hydrology and also to changes world climate🇧🇷

The SWOT Satellite: A New Lens on a Warming World

The SWOT satellite was launched on December 16 of this year from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, located in California. Led by NASA and the French National Center for Space Studies, this mission aims to remove radar from bodies of water, allowing scientists to measure and track the height, extent, and movement of water across the planet.

There are currently between 10,000 and 20,000 publicly available scientific data from 6 million known lakes and reservoirs. SWOT will be able to measure almost all of them and this will happen every 10 or 11 days.

The data that NASA’s newest satellite will provide is of utmost importance to scientists, so this is a large-scale project. Therefore, SWOT promises to bring about many advances in river hydrology and, consequently, in climate change.

In addition, SWOT will be able to provide high-resolution measurements, allowing scientists to track currents, eddies, and tidal ebbs and flows. To contribute to the progress promoted by the satellite, an international consortium – which includes countries such as the United States (USA), Australia, France and others – has emerged with the goal of promoting field missions in 18 oceanic locations around the world, helping to calibrate SWOT data.