SMASH: a constellation of small altimetry satellites to monitor daily inland surface waters

At global scale, there is still considerable uncertainty about the spatial and temporal variability of water storage and fluxes at the surface of continents. This is even more critical in the context of global climate change and the increasing human pressure on water resources. Despite this context, the following scientific questions remain difficult to answer, due to the coarse spatio-temporal resolution of current data: what is the global distribution of the heterogeneous change undergone by continental surface waters? What is the impact of anthropogenic pressure on water flows and stocks? What is the impact of these changes on the frequency and intensity of hydrological extremes (high and low waters)? To answer these questions, the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) has identified river levels/discharges and lake/reservoir levels/volumes as essential climate variables, and recommends daily sampling (GCOS, 2022). Besides, extreme events, such as floods or droughts, cover a wide range of spatio-temporal scales. At present, water volume variations can only be observed by satellite at the coarsest scales (and are therefore of interest only for floods on the scale of the world's largest watersheds). The lack of observation of these events in basins with little or no in situ instrumentation is a major issue to understand, simulate and forecast these events. Observing these events globally, at least on a daily scale, would make it possible to quantify local flooding, thus greatly improving our knowledge of these events.

One of the main issue to tackle these questions is the still rather coarse temporal sampling of current satellite missions, particularly altimetry missions. To overcome it, we are proposing the SMall Altimetry Satellites for Hydrology (SMASH) mission. This is a constellation of around 10 compact nadir radar altimeters optimized to provide daily observations of water levels in rivers, lakes and reservoirs along the constellation tracks. The specifications of the SMASH mission are the following: daily temporal sampling, observe water bodies larger than 100 m x 100 m and rivers as narrow as 50 m, with an accuracy on water elevation ~10 cm, and should provide products in near-real time and over the long term (10 years) in open access (open science and FAIR principles).

Combining "high temporal frequency/low spatial frequency" measurements from the SMASH mission with "high spatial frequency/low temporal frequency" measurements from swath altimetry missions (current SWOT or futur Sentinel-3 Next Generation Topography missions) would cover unprecedented time and space scales and should open new fields of research.