AirSWOT Water Surface Elevation Data for Mississippi River Delta

March 26 to September 12, 2021 data from the Delta-X airborne campaign provides high-resolution water surface elevation measurements over the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins in Louisiana. The dataset contains Level 2 geocoded products from the AirSWOT Ka-band interferometer, flown on a King Air B200, and is processed into cloud-optimized GeoTIFF rasters. This Version 3 release from ORNL_CLOUD serves as a calibration and validation source for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission.

Use Cases

• Calibrating elevation and slope models along river channels using estimated water surface elevation relative to WGS84 and NAVD88 datums.
• Validating airborne interferometry techniques for the SWOT satellite by analyzing high-resolution (3.6 m) digital elevation models over water.
• Studying tidal influence and water level changes in coastal basins by examining time-series data from specific flight lines with associated UTC timestamps.
• Assessing changes in water surface elevation due to survey updates, as demonstrated by the 0.138 m adjustment applied in Version 3.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution 3.6-meter digital elevation models derived from Ka-band radar interferometry.
• Covers two distinct seasonal deployment periods in Spring and Fall 2021, offering temporal variation.
• Includes detailed metadata per flight line, such as ID, start/end UTC times, and processor version for traceability.
• Explicitly flags data from September 1 and 5, 2021, that did not meet expected in-situ comparison metrics, guiding user caution.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file sizes, and complete column names are not provided across any platform.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (2026-03-13 and 2021-09-12), creating uncertainty about the most recent provenance update.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' or 'None', requiring users to investigate terms directly.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD, collected as part of the NASA Delta-X airborne campaign.

Collection Method

Data gathered via the AirSWOT instrument, a six-antenna Ka-band interferometer on a King Air B200 aircraft, using near-nadir wide-swath radar interferometry.

Time Range

2021-03-26 to 2021-09 12

Freshness

2026-03-13 03:10:55.388777

Geography

Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins of the Mississippi River Delta, Louisiana, USA.