CYGNSS data map flood inundation during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season

During flooding events such as these, there is an urgent need to quickly map in detail which areas have been severely affected, yet current satellite missions are not capable of sampling the global land surface at high enough spatio-temporal scales for flooding applications.

Here, we demonstrate a novel approach to high-resolution flood mapping by repurposing data from the new NASA mission, CYGNSS. The CYGNSS multi-satellite constellation was designed for frequent temporal sampling of the ocean surface in the tropics. We demonstrate that CYGNSS data provide clear signals of surface saturation and inundation extent over land at higher spatio-temporal resolution than radiometers like SMAP.