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nasa t1_ivl069o wrote

Reply to comment by CrustalTrudger in AskScience AMA Series: We're NASA experts working on SWOT - an upcoming mission that will observe nearly all water on Earth's surface. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator

The current plan from the SWOT Science Team is to use river width together with the elevation of the water surface that will be directly measured by SWOT. We'll calculate the slope of the top of the river from measurements of elevation, and we'll infer changes in the cross-sectional area from joint changes in elevation and in width. However, this does leave a big unknown: the minimal (unseen) cross-sectional area.

We will make a best guess for that based on many months of data through fitting with a simple equation for hydraulics (Manning Equation). Everything we produce, including our estimates of river discharge, will come with an estimate of uncertainty.

And, of course, we'll be using ground measurements at selected locations around the Earth for validation. (CD)

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WesternOne9990 t1_ivmhyrf wrote

I’m really psyched about NASA and what y’all represent in humanity and like rockets are really cool. I don’t have anything to add something gave me a chuckle. I thought, theres an avenue for me to tell a NASA employee, a representative of the worlds top scientist that their water science team sounds like snot. So yeah anyways, continue on with your all’s day. Thanks for your all’s work :)

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