NOAA Center for Tsunami Research

New Capabilities

Integrating SWOT data into operational tsunami forecasts

NASA's SWOT satellite caught a magnitude 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake's tsunami in unprecedented detail on July 30, 2025. The waves weren't behaving like a single stable swell—they scattered, interacted, and dispersed across the Pacific basin like nothing scientists expected from textbook models. For 50 years, researchers treated big tsunamis as 'non-dispersive,' meaning they travel as one coherent wave. That assumption just died.

Updated Jan 6