LOS ANGELES — A NASA\u002Dled international satellite mission was set for blastoff from Southern California early on Thursday on a major Earth science project to…
Dubbed SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, the advanced radar satellite is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of the life-giving fluid covering 70% of the planet, shedding new light on the mechanics and consequences of climate change.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
“It’s really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet’s surface,” said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington, who also leads NASA’s sea-level change team.Article content Studying the mechanism by which that happens will help climate scientists answer a key question: “What is the turning point at which oceans start releasing, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, rather than limiting it,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT’s program scientist at NASA in Washington.Article content
Freshwater bodies are another key focus SWOT, equipped to observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet , as well as more than 1 million lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres .
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