Abyssal marine tectonics from the SWOT mission.
other · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39666787.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/science.ads4472.
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Abstract
The global ocean covers 71% of Earth's surface, yet the seafloor is poorly charted compared with land, the Moon, Mars, and Venus. Traditional ocean mapping uses ship-based soundings and nadir satellite radar altimetry-one limited in spatial coverage and the other in spatial resolution. The joint NASA-CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission uses phase-coherent, wide-swath radar altimetry to measure ocean surface heights at high precision. We show that 1 year of SWOT data offers more detailed information than 30 years of satellite nadir altimetry in marine gravity, enabling the detection of intricate seafloor structures at 8-kilometer spatial resolution. With the mission still ongoing, SWOT promises critical insights for bathymetric charting, tectonic plate reconstruction, underwater navigation, and deep ocean mixing.