A new Earth monitoring instrument called the Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission will be launched early tomorrow morning. The first global survey of Earth's freshwater systems from space will be taken by the satellite. For the first time, it will be possible to measure the water's height.
The chief scientist and senior climate advisor at NASA said that it will help them understand where water is.
Understanding Earth's water and how it moves is crucial for both modeling climate change over the long term and dealing with emergencies like floods. A global view is needed to understand the events that are driven by global ocean currents and weather. The satellite is global. Canada and the UK worked on the satellite as well as NASA.
It will allow us to understand where water comes from and where it goes.
Satellite imagery shows us where the rivers and lakes are. The leader of the University of North Carolina's hydrology science says they can see their area. We can't see the height of the water in them.
Researchers will be able to get a more complete picture of the volumes of water found in a particular location once the observations begin. They can see how water systems change over time. Over time, we will be able to see how the volume of lakes and reservoirs changes. It will be possible to track the volume of water flowing through rivers from space.
Larger bodies of water will be the focus of the organization. It will be able to watch lakes that are larger than 15 acres. Data on millions of lakes and millions of miles of rivers around the globe will be made public. Ground-based gauges can take more regular readings, but they are expensive to install and are not available in all locations, so they are not ideal for most rivers.
Satellite data can be used to monitor water in lakes and rivers, but they are not designed for this purpose. The Ka-band Radar Interferometer is an instrument used to measure water elevation.
Radar interferometry works by sending out two sets of radar signals, which bounce off the Earth and back to the transmitter, then analyzing the interference of these two signals Researchers can use the difference between the two signals to calculate distance once the two are back at the detector. Researchers can see how deep the water is.
The size of KaRin is important. There are two 5-meter long booms on either side of its antennae. They can be used to view larger areas of the Earth's surface as they are spread widely apart. The resolution of the instruments will be ten times higher than current technologies.
If you think about a lake in a rural part of India where people rely on that water for irrigating their crops, this matters a lot. In order to be able to track these really important resources, SWOT will provide free and open data.
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