Tsunami Seen From Space: NASA’s SWOT Satellite Captures 2025 Kamchatka Megaquake in Unprecedented Detail
When a magnitude 8.8 megathrust earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 29, 2025, it sent a tsunami racing across almost the entire Pacific. Now, scientists have revealed something just as extraordinary as the quake itself: for the first time, a satellite has captured a giant Pacific tsunami in high-resolution detail from space, forcing a rethink of how these waves behave and how we forecast them. Wikipedia+1 New analyses of data from NASA and CNES’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite – published in The Seismic Record at the end of November – show a surprisingly intricate tsunami wavefield that challenges long‑held assumptions in tsunami science. ResearchGate+1 On December 3, 2025, that breakthrough is rippling through Google News and Discover, with fresh coverage from ScienceAlert, SURFER/Yahoo News and others helping bring the story to a global audience. ScienceAlert+2surfer.com+2