Science

Science Goals

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Southern Ocean near-surface current speed from ECCO2.

• Provide sea surface heights (SSH) and terrestrial water heights over a 120 km wide swath with a +/-10 km gap at the nadir track.

• Over the deep oceans, provide SSH within each swath with a posting every 2 km x 2 km, and a precision not to exceed 0.5 cm when averaged over the area.

• Over land, download the raw data for ground processing and produce a water mask able to resolve 100-m rivers and 1-km2 lakes, wetlands, or reservoirs. Associated with this mask will be water level elevations with an accuracy of 10 cm and a slope accuracy of 1 cm/1 km.

• Cover at least 90 percent of the globe. Gaps are not to exceed 10 percent of Earth's surface.

• SWOT will have a mission lifetime of 3 years

• The SWOT Science Requirements Document (PDF, 165 KB) is available for download.

• The SWOT Mission Science Document (PDF 28.8 MB) is available for download.

SWOT Basics

• SWOT Basics in 3 slides (Power Point, 7.21 MB). The SWOT Basics are contained in these 3 slides.