The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Science Team (ST) Meeting, Toulouse, France, September 19th - 22nd, 2023

The 2023 SWOT Science team meeting, organized 9 months after the successful launch of the mission, was the first opportunity to present and discuss the early results obtained from SWOT data over all surfaces. It was also an opportunity to discuss the initial fieldwork programs performed in 2023, aimed at collecting independent in-situ and airborne data required for the calibration and validation of the mission products. The project teams from NASA, CNES, and collaborative partners all over the world provided a detailed review of the processing algorithms and ongoing working plan for the release of initial pre-validated data products. The Science Team members provided poster overviews of their SWOT preparation studies and discussed their validation plans for the key Science Validation Phase starting after the meeting.

As a member responsible for the calibration and validation of SWOT data for Indian Rivers, Mr. Pankaj R. Dhote, a Ph.D. Scholar at IIT, Roorkee, and Scientist/Engineer SE at the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, ISRO, Dehradun, actively participated in the meeting. He shared insights into the field campaigns conducted in India, presented early results of SWOT data over calibration/validation orbits, and outlined plans for evaluation along with its diverse hydrological applications.

Ganga River Field Campaign Using Hydrological Instruments

A field campaign was carried out on the Ganga River, spanning from Prayagraj to Varanasi, as a part of a PhD research project during April 22-27, 2023. Various instruments such as GNSS receiver, GNSS carpet, portable echosounder, and ADCP were demonstrated in order to measure continuous water surface elevation, river velocity, discharge, and depth at specific locations. The data collected during this survey will aid in the development of a framework for "satellite data assimilation in hydraulic model" which will enable the estimation of river discharge at sparsely gauged locations. The survey was a collaborative effort between India (IIT Roorkee, IIRS, ISRO Dehradun, and IIT, Bombay) and France (IRD, Hydro-Matters, LEGOS, INRAE) and was led by Pankaj R. Dhote, a PhD student at IIT Roorkee and Scientist at IIRS, ISRO Dehradun, under the guidance of Prof. Ankit Agarwal and Prof. N. K. Goyal, from the Department of Hydrology at IIT Roorkee.