SATELLITE (SWOT) AND AIRBORNE (AIRSWOT) WIDE-SWATH ALTIMETERS TO STUDY THE GARONNE RIVER

摘要

The future NASA/CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission will provide global 2D maps of water elevations, water surface volume change and river discharge at an unprecedented resolution. To prepare this mission, airborne campaigns, called AirSWOT, will fly over the Garonne River (and other targets of interest) in 2014. To plan AirSWOT flights over the Garonne, 1D and 2D hydrodynamic models of the 50 km Garonne River reach between Tonneins and La Reole towns developed by the Laboratoire National d'Hydraulique et Environnement (LNHE) will be used. Models outputs will help to validate airborne measurements. After validation, AirSWOT measurements will be assimilated in the models to reduce model errors. Finally, potential algorithms to estimate discharge from AirSWOT and SWOT observations will be tested over this river reach. This paper presents the study domain, the hydrodynamic models and their use in the context of AirSWOT campaigns in France.