A global eye on water: What the SWOT mission reveals about Earth’s water
From Nile floods to satellites: Humanity’s long quest to measure water
For as long as people have lived near rivers and seas, we have watched the water, measured it and tried to understand it because our survival depended on it. In fact, ancient Egyptians built nilometers along the Nile more than 5,000 years ago to predict floods while in China early engineers estimated the speed of rivers with floating objects. In Europe thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci designed new ways to track river flow.