Zaartan t1_ivjy4sp wrote
How is KaRIn able to differentiate between water level and soil level beneath it? What's the maximum design depth it's supposed to be able to measure (i.e. what's the design margin you took)?
How do you process the data to account for measurement errors and false positives? I'm thinking a patch of water covered in algae could be detected as soil.
nasa t1_ivkws32 wrote
The radar signal will not penetrate through the water, so we won't be measuring how deep the water is, just how high the surface of the water is.
Knowing the shape of the land underneath the water (the bathymetry) still remains a mystery except for some pristine water bodies which are very clear and for which the bottom can be detected with other satellites like the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2). (CD)
nasa t1_ivkwpk6 wrote
The KaRIn radar instrument operates at the Ka-band frequency: so the signal that bounces back from the ocean, rivers, and lakes is much stronger than the signal that's reflected from land.
Using image processing techniques, the SWOT team is developing algorithms that will be able to differentiate between different surface types. (EP)
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