Scientists Plot Sea Levels Using GPS Satellites (engadget.com)

A team from the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC), University of Michigan and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discovered a new way to accurately measure the sea level. The technique is called GNSS-R, and involves bouncing low-powered signals from GPS satellites off of the ocean's surface and measuring the reflected signal with a GNSS-R receiver. The team used a research satellite launched last year as a GNSS-R receiver, but it will be able to tap a new constellation of receivers that NASA is launching this year as part of CYGNSS. That mission will make accurate measurements of surface winds using GPS satellites, but NOC scientists will be able to use them to measure ocean levels, too, yielding a thirty-fold increase in such data.

Comments

Re:Constant measuring

[vtcodger]

Same thing as now. The Global warming alarmists will pick the largest number, claim it is "Science" and ignore all other estimates. BTW, the article has no numbers other than "thirtyfold" increase -- which I'm guessing means thirtyfold MORE data, not thirtyfold BETTER data. I looked around the internet a bit. The R in GNSS-R apparently stands for Reflectometry. Couldn't find a figure for accuracy, but my initial impression is that it will be limited by two sets of ionospheric delays. It's not clear that's all that much use for sea level rise which needs measurements to a fraction of a mm per year.

I gather GNSS-R is expected to be useful for sensing surface winds, wave heights and similar stuff worldwide from orbit. That sure sounds desirable. Not at all sure about its applicability to sea level rise