When you buy through link on our web site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it exercise .
A new orbiter has mapped Earth ’s sea floors in unprecedented detail , a new written report reveals . .
The first year of measurements fromNASA’sSurface Water and Ocean Topography ( SWOT)satellite missionary station , launched in December 2022 and developed by NASA and France ’s Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales , enabled researcher to examine the boundaries between Continent and identify underwater hills and volcanoes that are too small to be detected by early 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.
" Finding these feature will really push scientific evolution forward , including tectonic theory , " subject area co - authorYao Yu , a physical geographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography , told Live Science . The finding could provide new information about ocean stream , nutritive exaltation in seawater and the geological history of Earth ’s ocean .
With a 5 - land mile ( 8 kilometers ) resolution and 21 - daytime way covering most of the planet , just one class of data from SWOT gives a clearer picture of the sea level than 30 days of data collectively gather by ships and older satellites , researchers say Dec. 12 in the journalScience .
To spot underwater features , SWOT measures the height of the sea surface . Despite appearances , that surface is not flat , Yu said . The gravitational pull of underwater social structure like hills and volcanoes causes weewee to pile atop those structures in spread - out ball . Changes in the ocean surface acme therefore point to what lies deep beneath the control surface .
The team focused on three types of underwater feature article : abyssal hills , small seamounts and continental margins . Abyssal hills — parallel ridges that are just hundreds of feet marvellous — are formed by the movements oftectonic dental plate . Using SWOT data , the squad map private pitcher’s mound and spotted a few places where the counselling of the ridgepole changed , suggest that at some dot in Earth ’s history , the tectonic plateful that formed them changed the direction of its movement .
" I ’m very surprised by the abyssal hill , ” Yu enjoin , because the researchers were n’t expecting to see so many hills in so short clock time .
— City - sizing seamount triple the height of earth ’s tall building discovered via gravitational anomalies
— When did plate tectonics begin ?
— submersed vent - like structure is spewing gas off Alaska ’s coast , US Coast Guard says
Yu and her co-worker also studied seamounts , or submersed volcanoes , which bear on sea stream and often act as hotspots for biodiversity . old satellites have map turgid seamounts , but the team spotted K of smaller , previously unknown seamounts less than 3,300 feet ( 1,000 meter ) magniloquent in the SWOT data .
The data point helped the team further refine maps of tectonic boundaries and ocean electric current near coastal field . " We ’re very interested in [ continental margins ] because the ocean currents and tides will bring nutrients and sediment from the land to the sea and tempt the biodiversity and environmental science in the coastal region , " Yu say .
In the oddment of itsplanned three - year science missionary station , SWOT will persist in to collect data on ocean currents , map out the ocean base and assess global freshwater accessibility throughout the year .
