Over the past 20 years, the scientific community has been developing a new measurement technique based on radar interferometry to enhance the remote sensing capability of the sea surface and obtain wide-swath measurements of water elevation at higher resolutions over both the ocean and land. The new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission will provide a spatial resolution one order of magnitude higher than present altimeters, and thus representing the next big breakthrough in Earth observation. The SWOT mission aims to provide SSH measurements in two dimensions along a 120km-wide-swath altimeter with an expected effective resolution between 15 and 30 km, hence, allowing in some regions the observation of the full range of mesoscale dynamics. This will likely open a new era for the understanding of ocean dynamics at these fine-scales.
During the 90-day calibration fast-sampling phase after launch, SWOT will provide observations of SSH on a daily basis in specific areas of the world ocean for instrumental calibration/validation. The region around the Balearic Islands in the Western Mediterranean Sea is one of the selected areas for the SWOT fast-sampling phase, becoming a strategic region of study for SWOT calibration, and providing a unique opportunity to enhance our knowledge of fine-scale ocean dynamics in Spanish waters. The study of this region is of special interest given that the Mediterranean Sea is recognized as an ideal laboratory for studying ocean processes of global relevance, such as water mass formation, overturning circulation, boundary currents, meso/submesoscale eddies and instabilities, carbon export and associated ecosystem responses.
In the framework of the FaSt-SWOT project, we propose to federate the new SWOT measurements with two synoptic high-resolution multi-platform experiments and high-resolution state-of-the-art data-assimilative models to characterize fine-scale dynamics and quantify the associated horizontal and vertical transports.
