Satellites Help Predict Floods

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, CA, USA. Floods can now be predicted in advance due to brilliant researchers. This comes with the help of satellites from NASA’s Gravity Recovery Climate experiment mission (originally designed to trace melting ice sheets while circling the earth). Catastrophic typhoons can be deadly, and this breakthrough may save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost.

J.T. Reager and his team of researchers wanted to help predict how badly flood will devastate an area, then provide an advance warning to the public. With advanced notice of the severity of a particular flood, people would be able to prepare all necessary actions needed to stay safe.

The researchers have used the three-month-long 2011 flooding of the Missouri River as their case study.  J.T. Reager and his team at the University of California evaluated how much water was stored in the river’s basin, and once they have determined the exact amount, they use the satellite to check how much water the ground had soaked in a few months ago. Because of this study, the National Weather Service was able to alert everyone who would be potentially affected a month before disaster struck.

As of now, they are hoping to get faster results from the satellites since there is still a three-month delay before they can get data needed to predict groundwater.”Just like a bucket can only hold so much water, the same concept applies to river basins,” says Reager. They are still hoping that NASA would be able to deliver data within 15 days.

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