If we commonly speak of the “ocean floor”, we should not expect it to be flat. Quite the contrary. In the same way that on the surface we have mountains, hills or volcanoes, the bottom of the Ocean is also dotted with geological formations, sometimes gigantic.
Recently, a satellite developed by NASA and Cnes, the French space agency, revealed an extremely detailed map of the ocean floor, highlighting details that had not been spotted during the first attempts at ocean topology mapping.
In one year SWOT has done more and better than what has been done for 30 years
Your SWOT Surface Water and Ocean Topographythis is the name of the NASA mission which led to the production of the ultra-detailed map of the ocean floor using a satellite. Previously, previous maps were obtained using boats, but also old satellites.
The latest, developed by the American space agency and Cnes, was launched in December 2022 and did better than what had been done for almost 30 years according to the researchers who unveiled this new map of the Ocean in a study published on December 12, 2024 in the journal Science.
“We show that one year of SWOT data provides more detailed information than 30 years of nadir satellite altimetry in the marine gravity domain, allowing complex seafloor structures to be detected at a spatial resolution of 8 kilometers.” we can read in the introduction to the study.
“ I am very surprised by the abyssal hills ”
Beyond showing, in unprecedented detail, what the ocean floor looks like, SWOT has shed light on a topology that had gone unnoticed for a long time.
Indeed, as reported LiveSciencethe team of Yao Yu, a physical geographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, by analyzing SWOT data, it was able to highlight several thousand small massifs of 1000 meters which had gone unnoticed during previous satellite surveys.
And the latter were notably discovered very deep, in the abyss, which surprised researchers. “I am very surprised by the abyssal hills.” Yao Yu was enthusiastic, particularly by the fact that SWOT was able to highlight so much compared to previous surveys.
© NASA / SWOT
A map that is not only used to show the bottom of the Ocean
Of course, such surveys are not just about knowing what the ocean floor looks like. This goes much further, since the details that were revealed by SWOT “will truly advance scientific developments, including tectonic theories” Yao Yu explained.
This new map will serve as a new support point to delve a little deeper into the geological history of the Ocean. “We are very interested in continental margins because ocean currents and tides bring nutrients and sediments from land to the ocean and influence the biodiversity and ecology of the coastal zone” added the researcher from the Californian institute.
The SWOT survey will continue to expand over time to continue to provide more details in the different areas mentioned above. There are still three years left on this mission.
Source : LiveScience
