Investigación

Proyectos vigentes

Fine-Scale ocean currents from integrated multi-platform experiments and numerical simulations: contribution to the new SWOT satellite mission

Equipo

Physical and Technological Oceanography Department (@IMEDEA)

Acrónimo

FaSt-SWOT

IP

Ananda Pascual (IMEDEA), Baptiste Mourre (SOCIB)

Resumen

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.

Actividades del proyecto

FaSt-SWOT aims to take a step further, capitalizing the unique observing and high-resolution modelling capabilities developed by IMEDEA and SOCIB teams over the recent years, and supporting the analysis and exploitation of the first SWOT high-resolution measurements. We propose two multi-sensor experiments during the SWOT fast-sampling phase after launch in the same area of the previous PRE-SWOT project. The field-work will combine gliders, drifter observations, ship data (including a new moving vessel profiler), HF radar, and mooring data together with satellite observations and numerical simulations. New tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be applied to the synergy of in-situ and SWOT data. Data-assimilative simulations will be used to both objectively optimize the sampling strategy and integrate satellite and in-situ observations through data assimilation to provide realistic estimates of the multi-variate ocean fields.

Fecha inicio

01/09/2022

Fecha finalización

31/08/2026

Organismo financiador

Spanish National Research Program and European Regional Development Fund (MINECO-FEDER) (PID2021-122417NB-I00)

Cuantía

194.000€