High-Resolution Mapping of the World’s Water Using Space Shuttle and Ground-Based Instruments: KaRIn, An Instrument Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Scientists are about to get an unprecedented view of the water on Earth because of the swirling ocean eddies that help shape the global climate.
Scientists will be able to track currents, swirling eddies and the ebb and flow of tides thanks to high-resolution measurements provided by the system. These will bolster understanding of water circulation and improve high-resolution models that can track the transfer of heat and carbon dioxide from the warming atmosphere into the depths of the ocean.
“For freshwater, this will be a quantum leap in terms of our knowledge,” said Daniel Esteban-Fernandez, KaRIn instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.
For example, current ground and satellite monitoring only gathers data on a few thousand of the world’s largest lakes, while SWOT will increase that number to over 1 million lakes.
“If SWOT does what we think it’s going to do, it’s going to change the face of hydrology,” says Colin Gleason, a geographer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an author on both studies.
A group of countries, including the US, France, Australia and others, is planning field expeditions at 18 ocean sites next year. These will help the data be compared with on-site ones in a variety of ocean conditions.
Billions of people now live in rapidly changing coastal areas that must develop plans to adapt to a future that includes rising seas, crumbing cliffs, and devastating hurricanes. They will have a dedicated satellite that looks at the world’s water.
The space shuttle in 2000 flew radar antennas to map the land, but it was only for 11 days. The concept will be improved by the KaRIn. The instrument will be able to measure the water’s height. To think we can improve accuracy by a factor of 100, and from a distance of almost 900 kilometers away from the surface, is kind of incredible,” says Daniel Esteban-Fernandez, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who helped develop KaRIn.
According to Benjamin Hamlington, a research scientist at the Sea Level and Ice Group in NASA, we will be able to see things that we haven’t seen before.
Exploring the depths of the Earth’s water bodies: 3D observations of steep-banked rivers and ocean features in Alaska for climate change monitoring
The research team has to rely on instruments that can be found at certain places in the body of water. The previous space-based satellites had a limited amount of data, which could not be compared to the true depths of Earth’s water bodies. There are steep-banked rivers that appear narrower even if more water is flowing through them.
The spacecraft will view nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) and capture them in 3D for the first time, as well as measure ocean features less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across.
The climate crisis is also fueling extreme weather patterns, including droughts and downpours. The satellite’s instruments can monitor both and provide essential information for disaster preparedness and water management agencies.
“That’s important, because Alaska, being in the Arctic, is also the place in the United States experiencing the most climate change right now. If you want to know why that matters, think about how many resources we get from Alaska.”