Canada’s Contributions to the SWOT Mission – Terrestrial Hydrology(SWOT-C TH)

Abstract

The origins of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission date back to the mid-1970s with the launch of GOES-3 and SEASAT. These missions were then followed in 1992 by the Topex-Poseidon satellite, then by Jason-1 (2001), OSTM/Jason-2 (2008), and Jason 3 (2016), a series of joint satellite missions between NASA and CNES with a goal to monitor global ocean circulation. The proposed new SWOT mission will provide 120-kmwide swath interferometric coverage with a 20-km-wide gap at the nadir. The SWOT measurements will consist of water surface elevations and water surface slopes covering nearly all of the earth's land surface at least once every 21 days. In 2010, NASA invited the Canadian Space Agency to contribute, and Canadian scientists welcomed the invitation to join the SWOT Science Definition Team and contribute to the experiments. The Canadian segment of the mission is known as the "SWOT-C" project. The SWOT satellite mission will provide unique opportunities in the Canadian context for water managers in both the public domain and in the private sector. This paper provides an overview of recent scientific progress by the SWOT-C Terrestrial Hydrology team, outlining current plans and progress towards applications and calibration post-launch.

Assessing the capabilities of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission for large lake water surface elevation monitoring under different wind conditions

“…The study, one of several ongoing SWOT-C TH (Pietroniro et al, 2019), compared water heights computed by the SWOT-HR hydrology simulator with those provided by the H2D2 hydrodynamic model under various wind scenarios. Resulting estimates of water storage were also compared with those provided by gauge measurements within a synthetic framework.…”

“…A number of extensive ground-based and remotely sensed derived data sets are required to set up a hydrodynamic model and to perform the SWOT simulations. As part of the SWOT-C TH effort (Pietroniro et al, 2019), two fieldwork campaigns were carried out in the PAD during summer 2017 by the Environment and Climate Change Canada and the University of Sherbrooke with support from Wood Buffalo National Parks. In addition to the long-term water level hydrometric network stations on the Prairie River and Mamawi Lake outflow, project-specific measurements of water levels and streamflow were also taken in the main channels around Mamawi Lake (see Fig.…”

“…To support the mission, the SWOT Canada Terrestrial Hydrology (SWOT-C TH) team has developed several research field-and modelling-based projects (Pietroniro et al, 2019). One of these projects is focused on the Peace-Athabasca delta (PAD) in northern Alberta, Canada.…”

Analytical and Residual Bootstrap Methods for Parameter Uncertainty Assessment in Tidal Analysis with Temporally Correlated Noise

“…Even more important, future work must explore the possibility of using some externally estimated GLS variance-covariance to complete and support the analysis of sparsely sampled data. Such improved information would help at resolving the centimeter-scale variability of some tidal components from satellite measurements, such as those from the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and forthcoming missions (e.g., Morrow et al 2019;Pietroniro et al 2019).…”

Remote Sensing of Boreal Wetlands 2: Methods for Evaluating Boreal Wetland Ecosystem State and Drivers of Change

“…SWOT pre-launch activities include airborne and field campaigns, which include several study sites in the Canadian prairie and arctic regions [364]. A key tool used in preparation for the SWOT launch in fall 2021 is AirSWOT, an airborne analogue to SWOT, with the purposes of better understanding Ka-band backscattering at SWOT-like incidence angles and to serve as a calibration and validation tool for SWOT.…”