Get involved with next-gen satellites with AUSWOT

February 27, 2019 AUSWOT Working Group

An artist’s concept of the SWOT spacecraft (February 2015). Source: swot.jpl.nasa.gov

The AUSWOT Working Group (auswot.org) is a consortium of researchers and stakeholders that aims to develop capacity within the Australian scientific community to capitalise on the next generation of Earth-observing satellites, specifically the NASA/CNES Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission (swot.jpl.nasa.gov). This article outlines the SWOT mission and the proposed goals of the Working Group. We invite all interested research partners to participate and contribute their expertise.

What is the SWOT mission?

The SWOT mission is a ground-breaking future satellite mission that will provide the first global survey of Earth’s surface water, observe fine details of the ocean’s surface topography, and measure how water bodies change over time. Scheduled for launch in September 2021, SWOT will be a powerhouse for monitoring Earth’s surface water inventory, ocean dynamics, and long-term environmental change.
SWOT will use pioneering wide-swath radar interferometry to retreive 2D maps of water elevation with a spatial resolution more than 10 times that of current satellites. For the first time, SWOT will enable monitoring of major lakes, wetlands, and rivers on land, and submesoscale eddies and currents (30-100 km) in the ocean, providing critical information on sea level change, freshwater resources, and upper ocean dynamics.
SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES with contributions from researchers around the world, including Australia. The Australian government and the Integrated Marine Observing System (imos.org.au) are investing in SWOT through a calibration/validation campaign at the Bass Strait altimeter validation site (led by Chris Watson, UTas and Benoit Legrasy, CSIRO) and delivery of daily gridded sea level anomalies via OceanCurrent (oceancurrent.imos.org.au).

What are the goals of the AUSWOT Working Group?

The AUSWOT Working Group (auswot.org) aims to support the SWOT mission and
develop domestic capability in the field of wide swath satellite altimetry by addressing
key issues relevant to the Australian community, including:

Collation of the latest international progress of the SWOT mission
National coordination of SWOT products for research/operational applications
Field campaigns of opportunity during fast-sampling cal/val phase
Synergistic observing platforms, e.g. HF radar, moorings, gliders, drifters
Mapping daily geostrophic currents from SWOT sea-surface height data
Developing a climatology of seasonal cycle and seasonal anomaly variability
Internal tides and internal wave variability from SWOT observations
Impact of submesocale variability on larval transport and fisheries productivity
Surface water budget for the Australian continent
Measurement of Antarctic sea-ice thickness/extent and snow/ice freeboard
Improvement of hydrological models over land and ocean
Validation and assimilation of river height / discharge observations
SWOT observation impact assessment for ocean forecasts
Representation of SWOT observation error in data assimilating models
Dispersal of marine plastics, oil spills, etc; search-and-rescue operations
Secondary data products, end-user requirements, QC, archiving and delivery
Building capacity for future missions e.g. SKIM (ESA) and COMPIRA (JAXA)

The Working Group aims to bring together teams of researchers and stakeholders to identify specific research goals related to the SWOT mission. Funding to support these research goals will be sought through the ARC Linkage scheme later this year. We invite interested research partners and stakeholders from the University, Government, and Industry sectors to participate in the Working Group. Please send an expression of interest to Dr Shane Keating (s.keating@unsw.edu.au).