NASA’s SWOT satellite captures first detailed look at 2025 tsunami, revealing mid-ocean waves and dispersive behaviour

A powerful 2025 Kuril-Kamchatka earthquake generated a Pacific-wide tsunami, captured by NASA’s SWOT satellite. These unprecedented high-resolution images reveal complex, braided wave patterns, challenging the assumption that large tsunamis travel as non-dispersive waves. This discovery offers crucial new insights into mid-ocean energy distribution, promising to significantly improve future tsunami forecasting and hazard assessments.