In February 2024, a series of atmospheric rivers flooded California as record rainfall and hurricane-force winds battered parts of the state. The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission collected data on coastal flooding near the community of Manchester, approximately 105 miles (169 kilometers) north of San Francisco. The satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatials).
This image shows the area on January 15, 2024, before rain and snow from atmospheric rivers hit California, and the area on February 4, 2024, after the first of a series of storms soaked California. is shown. Water levels are displayed in shades of green and blue, with lighter colors indicating the highest levels compared to mean sea level. (Data for inland areas includes flood height and underlying ground elevation.) Each pixel in the image represents an area of ​​330 feet by 330 feet (100 meters by 100 meters).
Since December 2022, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all the water on Earth's surface, providing one of the most detailed and comprehensive views of Earth's oceans and freshwater lakes and rivers ever. We are developing. Not only can this satellite detect the extent of surface water like other satellites, but SWOT can also provide water level data.
The mission science team made the measurements using a Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument. KaRIn uses her two antennas placed 33 feet (10 meters) apart on a boom to reflect radar pulses at the water surface, producing a pair of data bands while orbiting the Earth. to collect surface height measurements.
Launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, SWOT is currently operational and collecting data for use in research and other purposes.
SWOT was jointly developed by NASA and CNES in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for his NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, is leading the U.S. portion of this project. As a flight system payload, NASA provided her KaRIn instrument, GPS science receiver, laser retroreflector, two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES will deploy the satellite-based Doppler Orbital Positioning and Radiolocation Integration (DORIS) system, the dual-frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), and the KaRIn radio frequency subsystem (in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space, with support from the UK Space Agency). ) provided. Satellite platforms and ground operations. CSA provided the KaRIn high power transmitter assembly. NASA provided the launch vehicle, and NASA's Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, managed associated launch services.
For more information about SWOT, please visit https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/.