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A novel satellite has mapped Earth ’s ocean floors in unprecedented item , a new study let on . .
The first year of measurements fromNASA’sSurface Water and Ocean Topography ( SWOT)satellite mission , launched in December 2022 and developed by NASA and France ’s Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales , enable investigator to contemplate the boundaries between continents and identify underwater mound and volcano that are too small to be detected by earliest satellites .
In its first year of operation, the SWOT satellite captured more details of the sea floor than in 30 years of data collected by older satellites.
" find these feature will really push scientific evolution forrard , including tectonic theories , " study Colorado - authorYao Yu , a forcible geographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography , told Live Science . The finding could provide new information about ocean current , nutritive transportation in seawater and the geologic chronicle of Earth ’s oceans .
With a 5 - mile ( 8 kilometers ) resolution and 21 - day path covering most of the major planet , just one year of data from SWOT gives a open picture of the sea floor than 30 years of information conjointly gathered by ships and older satellites , research worker say Dec. 12 in the journalScience .
To recognise underwater features , SWOT measures the height of the sea surface . Despite appearances , that surface is not flat , Yu allege . The gravitational pull of underwater complex body part like James Jerome Hill and volcano causes urine to pile atop those anatomical structure in spreading - out lumps . change in the sea Earth’s surface stature therefore level to what lie deep beneath the surface .
The squad center on three eccentric of underwater features : abyssal Hill , small seamounts and continental margins . Abyssal hills — parallel ridges that are just hundreds of feet tall — are formed by the campaign oftectonic denture . Using SWOT data , the team map individual hills and spot a few post where the direction of the ridge changed , suggesting that at some stop in Earth ’s history , the architectonic plate that formed them commute the guidance of its movement .
" I ’m very surprised by the abyssal hills , ” Yu said , because the researchers were n’t expecting to see so many hills in so lilliputian time .
— City - size of it seamount triple the altitude of existence ’s improbable edifice discovered via gravitative anomalies
— When did plate tectonics get ?
— submerged volcano - same structure is spewing gas off Alaska ’s seacoast , US Coast Guard says
Yu and her co-worker also study seamount , or underwater volcanoes , which move sea currents and often work as hotspots for biodiversity . Older satellite have mapped large seamount , but the squad spotted M of smaller , previously obscure seamounts less than 3,300 feet ( 1,000 time ) tall in the SWOT data .
The data helped the squad further refine mathematical function of architectonic boundaries and sea flow near coastal areas . " We ’re very interested in [ continental margin ] because the ocean currents and tide will bring nutrients and sediments from the farming to the sea and influence the biodiversity and ecology in the coastal sphere , " Yu say .
In the remainder of itsplanned three - twelvemonth skill foreign mission , SWOT will continue to pull together data on ocean current , represent the ocean floor and assess global fresh water availability throughout the year .
