Hello my name is Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer. I direct the Ocean Physics
Program at NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate. I'm also a SWOT program scientist.
We're launching a new mission, it is called SWOT, and today I would like to share with you why we,
NASA scientists, are buzzing with excitement and anticipation about SWOT launch later this year.
The SWOT is a water mission. It will track nearly all surface water on planet Earth whether that we
drink water that we use for crops water that fuels our weather events like storms and rain water that
controls Earth Energy water that softens our climate all water that rises from the Seas takes
over our land and changes our Coastline all this water will be seen by SWAT in one mission for the
first time almost entirely over the whole globe and by the whole globe I mean both the oceans
where what originates and land where the water sinks fills our lakes and rivers and reservoirs
and everything in between the coasts where water returns back from land to the ocean completing
and perpetuating our water cycle so today I thought let's pretend that we're flying with
a SWOT satellite over the globe and trades this cycle of water and see what we can learn about
Earth's energy water and climate along the way so I'll start with the water source uh or what origin
story how my uh comic noise at home would tell will tell you all water originates in the ocean
ocean supplies a tremendous amount of moisture millions of cubic meters per second are leaving
the ocean lucky for us most of this moisture comes back to the ocean as as rain and precipitation and
snow mostly in the tropics and high latitudes as you see on this white spots on this animation but
some of it does make its way to land and we humans and ecosystems we rely on this
steady supply of this moisture from the ocean to land and any deviations from this Norm would be
felt on land we would have droughts if the ocean supply of moisture is interrupted or we will have
floods if the supplies becomes too large so as a global missions what global view would allow us to
monitor is the cycle of water and its disruption as a complete process both in terms of the supply
from the ocean as well as demand and usage of water on land essentially SWOT will give us this
missing connection between the water sources and water sinks between the water movement and water
storage between water supply and water demand between ocean and land yeah we're excited so
um what happens uh what water moves let's talk a little bit about it when water moves it moves and
transfers a bunch of properties with it properties like uh heat or energy carbon nutrients oxygen
everything that we call fundamental cycles of the earth climate system and this uh cycling this
transfer of this fundamental properties largely determined by the upper ocean of flow something
that we would be able to derive from SWOT and one of the most exciting part of that is that we will
see the water movement with unprecedented Clarity at a high definition that ever before like 10x
better than what we observe now it's a going from your old via chest tape to a 4K screen pretty cool
so why why high definition matters besides that of course nobody likes to look at blurry pictures
but why does it matter for Earth signs well it turns out it's pretty important for a major
um Earth uh climate processes I'll give you one example Earth energetics
what we will learn from conventional altimetry that NASA and partners been flying for for three
decades by now is that ocean ability to move and store heat is what actually spared a Humanity from
experiencing a full impact of global warming until now and the biggest question in climate
science today is for how long uh what is the turning point when the ocean slows down this
absorption of heat and starts releasing this energy back in the atmosphere where it came from
for context for example if oceans were to release all this accumulated extra heat our low atmosphere
would heat up by additional 36 degrees Celsius that's a whooping almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit
obviously such released instantaneous release is not physically possible but the gradual release is
so how gradual it will be how fast this process will progress this is what's what comes in and
we hope would answer this critical climate question of our time and you can imagine
that even small release of energy giving the oceans huge thermal capacity that would lead
to large and uncomfortable warming tendency in the atmosphere so viewing at high definition
viewing ocean energetics from large to small is what will allow us to see the Earth energetic in
their completeness and improve our prediction of the future Earth Energy budget wherever it might
come in fact what do we know about small scale energy transport and exchange today
well our climate models including one uh such as NASA Echo they say that small energetics are
pretty prominent players in the earth climate system uh some studies suggest that ocean 80s
and turbulence that pump up more heat in and out of the atmosphere than heating from the greenhouse
effect that's an impressive statement is it true our models are correct well we've never observed
it until SWAT over the globe so what would be our first observational evidence of such an effect our
reality check whether our current understanding of the climate system is correct our understanding
and prediction of the fundamental cycles of energy heat moisture carbon that's a big ask that's a big
deal no wonder where buzzing with excitement and also think about it if the turbulence turns out
to be that missing piece that helps us better predict the future that would also become a
paradigm shift in the requirement for our future observing platforms because whatever NASA decides
to observe next it's better be prepared to observe and resolve the climate of the future so again all
eyes are on SWAT to demonstrate what would be our next standard in Ocean observant would be
all right so let's keep flying from Ocean to land from sources to sing and come back to that so
let's see what's what can do for us there so even though land hydrology uh takes up less than 10 of
the water cycle this is all Earth available water as we call it water that we use in agriculture in
industry and drinking uh this all available water as we call it it's stored in reservoirs on land
and SWOT would measure surface elevation and storage in millions of lakes and rivers almost
everywhere in the globe some places for the first time This World by view of land water storage is
is a phenomenal characteristic of the mission it's just hard to overstate with what we will
know where this water is now where it is going and where it will be tomorrow with SWOT we will be
able to answer if a population have enough water to survive or has too much water that damage their
livelihoods this information is key to start addressing what Equity issues across the globe
this is also key to prepare for a new climate as the planet continues to warm and the water cycle
continues to change some land reservoirs would be oversupplied through ocean moisture through
rain riba floods or increased surface runoff that contaminates our drinking Waters while other land
resverats would get replenished fast enough and causes deficit in our water in industry
in agriculture sword data would be critical to plan for the future like that it will also help
us address issues in environmental and climate justice as well it make decision in our daily life
we truly anticipate that swordland hydrology data would help Water Resource Management food
and disaster management variety of Water Industries such as hydropower Hydraulics
navigation or provide information to those who study water quality or do a service
of the ecosystems in fact our science teams already working with external users through
a program that is called SWOT early adopters they too want to be ready to use data on day
one and they too are buzzing with excitement and I hope that you begin to understand why
all right so flying flying further from lands to Ocean through the coast when water comes back
this from land to the ocean this high definition uh property of sort will give us this unique a new
look of coastal environments that means never before scenes of our estuaries river deltas
watersheds as well as Coastal environments and sea level that affects half of the world
population and a coast is where home of our major economic and Industrial Energy Center
so again why do we need a high resolution and close to the coast sea level information
well one of the example I'd like to leave you with is to improve uh our projections of the future sea
level rise here's on this plot you're looking at the NASA's first projection with an example of
Washington DC and one thing you can notice is the divergent of our futures depending of what choices
we make today the only way to know what future we are on is to observe where we are headed in real
time to have real-time observations in order to demonstrate which trajectory we are most likely
to follow in order for us to prepare for this most likely future so bringing coasts in the sea level
and hot spot of sea level run into Focus this is where SWAT comes in I call it SWOT goggles
where they really bring the high definition and high resolution Coastal environment into Focus
so all of this unprecedented information from science and ferrometry uh means unprecedented
amount of data volume even with SWAT smart hybrid approach of onboarding uh on board
processing of some of the information NASA was looking at tripling the amount of data
volume streams with SWOT and we're not talking about small numbers so essentially SWOT was the
Catalyst for NASA to rethink the work with large data and move the agency towards the cloud that
moves towards the cloud with additional push for us to broaden our definition of open science which
which is both technological shift but also a cultural shift for our community and users
and with SWOT Observatory mini first both technological and scientific
um we felt that it was um a proud moment for our community to lead the way towards this
new way of doing business of science science of sharing and cooperation for Mutual benefit
um science where you build an inclusive community where collaboration is more accessible and fun
so SWOT science team was Paving the way with this transition and I'm very proud of the steam
accomplishment and I must say there is no better way to start 2023 the year of open science at
Nasa then kicking it off with SWAT launch later this year and bracing a tray of open signs or
testing new observing Technologies and in general pushing frontiers of scientific knowledge is also
a no better way to do it as with long-standing Partners like our partners at kness we started our
collaboration three decades ago with the launch of the first altimetry mission topics Poseidon
and now we're launching SWOT with our partners at kness taking altimetry to a new level to its
next orbit so when we look back at this 30 years of collaboration we we reflect on our friendship
we celebrate our commitment to Earth and ocean observing and doing it with a partner Alaska
gives you a certain level of comfort it's like working with somebody you grew up with somebody
that you know very well it's it's always good to do new tricks with old friends so finally I want
to give a sure a shout out to our Schwartz science team we are an international and diverse group
of scientists we both work on individual science investigations we also work as a group on thematic
challenges we planned a dozen of exciting field campaigns to take advantage of this what fast
daily repeat cycle we are also connecting with external using and Industry management and policy
makers being a NASA scientist is a competitive process we just recompided the team a couple of
years ago and have a lot of new blood and a lot of early career scientists but some our members
worked with onsword for 20 years or more that is the people that took us all the way from wild
dreams to reality and we extremely grateful to them in fact I asked the team what excites you
about sword the most and here is what they send me uh enjoy and hear it from them directly we
are in a very mature phase for SWAT because we have been working on this for more than a decade
and that the science Community is really excited about the preparation for SWAT we have learned so
much just from the preparation of what we hope to see and that the science Community is really
excited we have some really accurate satellite altimeters but they're like a point measurement
going along on the satellite track what we'll be making two-dimensional measurements kind of
mapping out a picture of the ocean surface as it goes along so fundamentally uh SWAT measures two
things it measures the elevation of water surfaces in rivers lakes and oceans around the world
and it measures the extent of them it measures how big they are and how that changes over time
SWAT will not measure the very small particles I'm not measure of the segmental scale but it will get
at this very very interesting dough between you know 15 and 150 kilometers that we are not able
to observe right now and so I'm really excited about just seeing what what the Ocean looks like
we just don't know we've had these glimpses and now we'll be able to see what happens
over a season what happens in the regions that no one's bothered to do a field campaign and I think
that's that's the thing that I'm most excited about and I'm really excited about being able to
image the ocean surface to seeds internal Tides more clearly and then I'm also really excited
about the higher latitude observations of SWAT I think we'll just learn so much about the tides in
the Arctic and around around Antarctica that we haven't been able to learn from previous missions
there are still big parts of the world where either because of a lack of infrastructure
or a lack of um uh sort of the right political environment we're really blind to how the amount
of water in rivers is changing over time and SWAT is for the first time really from space going to
going to show us how much water is flowing through the world's River we've been trying to do this
with other satellites for 30 years at least and we've made some progress but nothing like we're
going to be able to do with SWAT it's just a complete Game Changer so SWOT will truly be a
revolution for the understanding of how much water flow is within the U.S flavors uh globally because
it's a first of its kind measurement it's really the first mission that is specifically designed to
measure the US Rivers among other very important things but it will provide Global observations
in a way that is Unified same instrument same measurement everywhere and and devoid of political
bias so we are prepared I think we are well prepared but we are also open that there may be
the new opportunities and perhaps new challenges that come out of this observation but I think it's
it's something that the whole ocean community that is working on small-scale structures is really
really excited to see what will come out from spot all right so here you have it NASA's Earth next
mission is in search for water on planet Earth thank you for watching and go SWAT bye for now