US French satellite SWOT captures Kamchatka tsunami in unprecedented detail
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite recorded the tsunami generated by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30. Passing over the area roughly 70 minutes later, SWOT measured the wave's height, shape, and travel direction.
Tsunamis form when powerful disturbances such as earthquakes or underwater landslides displace the full water column from seafloor to surface. These movements produce far-reaching waves, much like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond.
"The power of SWOT's broad, paintbrush-like strokes over the ocean is in providing crucial real-world validation, unlocking new physics, and marking a leap towards more accurate early warnings and safer futures," said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, NASA Earth lead and SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
SWOT detected a leading wave crest exceeding 1.5 feet (45 centimeters). Data from the pass, running southwest to northeast, was compared to a forecast from NOAA's Center for Tsunami Research. The close match validated the model's predictions.
"A 1.5-foot-tall wave might not seem like much, but tsunamis are waves that extend from the seafloor to the ocean's surface," said Ben Hamlington, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "What might only be a foot or two in the open ocean can become a 30-foot wave in shallower water at the coast."
Information from SWOT is now aiding NOAA scientists in refining forecast scenarios, which integrate historical tsunami data with real-time ocean sensor readings. These outputs guide warnings sent to communities at risk.
"The satellite observations help researchers to better reverse engineer the cause of a tsunami, and in this case, they also showed us that NOAA's tsunami forecast was right on the money," said Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer.
Vasily Titov, chief scientist at NOAA's Center for Tsunami Research, noted that the alignment between SWOT data and the forecast was encouraging. "It suggests SWOT data could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecastseart - a capability sought since the 2004 Sumatra event," he said. That disaster killed thousands and devastated coastal Indonesia.
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