A NASA-led international mission launched a radar (雷达) satellite from southern California. The satellite will be involved in a major project to research the world's oceans, lakes and rivers.
The satellite is called SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography. It is designed to give scientists a never-before-seen view of the Earth's water, which covers about 70 percent of the planet.
About the size of a car, the satellite uses advanced microwave radar technology to collect detailed height and surface measurements of all bodies of water. The data will provide researchers with more information on the effects of climate change.
Data will be taken from radar readings of the planet at least two times every 21 days. The information will help study ocean currents, predict the weather, and control freshwater supplies in areas with little rain.
One major goal of the mission is to research how oceans absorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide (CO2) — the natural process that slows down temperatures and climate change.
SWOT is designed to measure small differences in surface heights around smaller currents, where much of the oceans' reduction of heat and carbon is believed to happen. And SWOT can do so with 10 times more accurate (精确的) details than existing technologies.
The world's oceans are estimated (估计) to have absorbed more than 90 percent of the extra heat trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Studying how that happens will help climate scientists answer an important question: What is the turning point at which oceans start giving off, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere?
The satellite will also be used to study the effects of rising ocean levels. And it will be able to measure all rivers wider than 100 meters, as well as more than 1 million lakes and bodies of water larger than 6.25 hectares.
