Sentinel-6B will measure sea floor top for almost the entire world’s ocean, offering vital information for data merchandise, together with climate and hurricane forecasts.
NASA has a protracted report of monitoring Earth’s sea floor top, data vital not just for monitoring how the ocean adjustments over time but additionally for hurricane forecasting. These excessive storms can value the USA billions of {dollars} every year, wreaking havoc on lives and property. Meteorologists have labored to enhance forecasts for a hurricane’s path, or monitor, in addition to its depth, measured as floor wind velocity. Sentinel-6B, the U.S.-European satellite tv for pc launching later this 12 months, will assist in that effort.
The satellite tv for pc is the second of two spacecraft that represent the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, a collaboration between NASA, ESA (European House Company), EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), and the U.S. Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With its launch deliberate for no sooner than Nov. 16, 2025, Sentinel-6B will take over from its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which launched in November 2020 as a part of a protracted line of U.S.-European missions which have monitored sea ranges since 1992.
“Sentinel-6 will monitor world adjustments in Earth’s ocean — top, warmth, and motion — and can enhance forecasts of native extremes like floods and hurricanes, linking planetary developments to real-world dangers for communities,” mentioned Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, Sentinel-6 program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The decades-long, U.S.-European ocean dataset has been key to serving to researchers advance hurricane depth forecasting. Heat water fuels hurricanes. And since water expands because it warms, sea floor top can inform researchers which areas of the ocean are heat sufficient to supercharge a hurricane.
“A deep layer of heat seawater is actually taller than a shallow layer of heat water,” mentioned Josh Willis, Sentinel-6B challenge scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. So sea floor top can be utilized as a proxy for the quantity of warmth within the ocean.
There are two major ways in which forecasters use sea degree measurements, mentioned Mark DeMaria, a senior analysis scientist at Colorado State College in Fort Collins. A method is to assist set the correct ocean situations in ocean-atmosphere hurricane forecast fashions utilized by the Nationwide Hurricane Heart.
The second approach is by feeding sea degree information into machine studying fashions that forecasters use to foretell whether or not a hurricane will bear fast intensification, the place its wind speeds enhance by 35 mph (56 kph) or extra inside 24 hours. Meteorologists embrace each water temperature measurements from sensors drifting within the ocean and sea floor top information collected by Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich in addition to different satellites.
Hurricanes churn the ocean as they cross overhead, mixing the highest layers of seawater. If the storm encounters a shallow pool of heat seawater, its winds can stir issues up, pulling cooler waters from the depths to the floor. This could hinder fast intensification. But when the nice and cozy pool of seawater extends deep into the ocean, these winds will solely fire up extra heat water, probably ensuing within the hurricane’s fast intensification.
“Hurricane Milton is an ideal instance of this,” mentioned DeMaria, who was beforehand a department chief on the Nationwide Hurricane Heart in Miami and helped to develop hurricane depth forecast fashions. Milton skilled an intense interval of fast intensification — an occasion that was forecast utilizing a mannequin fed partly with information from Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. From Oct. 6 to Oct. 7, 2024, Milton exploded from a Class 1 hurricane to a Class 5, producing wind speeds as excessive as 180 mph (289 kph). The storm weakened to a Class 3 — nonetheless a serious hurricane — by the point it made landfall close to Sarasota, Florida, on Oct. 9.
Whereas the U.S.-European sequence of sea degree satellites started accumulating measurements in 1992, it wasn’t till the early 2000s that meteorologists began working with information from satellites in operational hurricane depth forecasts similar to those utilized by the Nationwide Hurricane Heart. Earlier than then, forecasts relied on fashions and ocean floor temperature measurements that weren’t at all times in a position to determine heat, deep swimming pools of seawater that might induce fast intensification in a hurricane.
Enchancment efforts received a lift when the U.S. federal authorities began a program in 2007 geared toward advancing these kinds of forecasts. Since then, this system has helped transfer enhancements made within the analysis realm — similar to in hurricane forecast reliability and accuracy, extensions within the lead time for predictions, and decreased forecast uncertainty — into operational use.
The funding has been cash nicely spent, mentioned Renato Molina, an economist on the College of Miami who has analyzed the financial affect of bettering hurricane forecasts. An correct, well timed forecast may give communities time to arrange, similar to by boarding up houses and companies or evacuating an space. The financial financial savings can attain into the billions, he added.
Whereas a number of atmospheric and oceanic traits go into hurricane forecasts, the inclusion of sea degree information from satellites like Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and, quickly, Sentinel-6B has been an vital addition. “We want information from sensors within the ocean in addition to satellite tv for pc information — they go hand-in-hand,” mentioned DeMaria. “It might be not possible to do what we do with out the satellites.”
Sentinel-6/Jason-CS was collectively developed by ESA, EUMETSAT, NASA, and NOAA, with funding help from the European Fee and technical help from France’s area company CNES (Centre Nationwide d’Études Spatiales).
NASA JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, contributed three science devices for every Sentinel-6 satellite tv for pc: the Advanced Microwave Radiometer, the Global Navigation Satellite System – Radio Occultation, and the Laser Retroreflector Array. NASA can be contributing launch providers, floor techniques supporting operation of the NASA science devices, the science information processors for 2 of those devices, and help for the U.S. members of the worldwide Ocean Floor Topography Science Workforce.
For extra about Sentinel-6/Jason-CS, go to:
https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/jason-cs-sentinel-6
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-491-1943 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-096