SWOT observations, West of Aotearoa New Zealand, June 11th 2023

This video shows swell resolved in SWOT SSH (in blue) and radar backscatter (grey shades) data, as the satellite flies along track 017 over the Pacific ocean, west and North of Aotearoa New Zealand, on June 11, 2023, as part of cycle 548. The video captures waves reflected from land and/or scattered from shallow water areas. Note the ring-shaped waves from the East around y = 2500 km and from the West around y = 2900 km. In that second case the wave height of these waves from the West is only 3 cm. They come from Norfolk Island, 300 km to the West. Just like traditional polynesian voyagers could detect land over the horizon thanks to the small waves from the side, SWOT detects very small amplitude swells that reveal land and underwater topography.