NASA SWOT Project: Simulated Water Surface Elevation Data for North America

A simulated water surface elevation product resembling KaRIn measurements from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. This subset provides global coverage simulation focused on the North America continent, with swaths spanning 128 km and a 20-km nadir gap. The dataset is a less noisy, height-constrained geolocation complement to the L2_HR_PIXC_V1 product, created by NASA and available under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Testing water body detection algorithms based on simulated KaRIn interferometer measurements.
• Validating geolocation and height estimation methods for river and lake features using the provided pixel identifiers.
• Benchmarking data processing pipelines for the upcoming SWOT mission's L2_HR_PIXC_V1 product.
• Studying simulated satellite data characteristics for North American surface water prior to real mission data availability.

Strengths

• Provides a simulated preview of the SWOT mission's KaRIn instrument data, which has a planned global coverage.
• Focuses on the North America continent, offering regional specificity.
• Includes pixel identifiers linked to the Prior River Database (PRD) and Prior Lake Database (PLD) for feature association.
• Data is less noisy and height-constrained compared to the related L2_HR_PIXC_V1 product.

Limitations

• The description explicitly states the data is simulated and 'not suited for any scientific exploration'.
• Row count, column definitions, and last update date are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• Data access requires an Earthdata Login account and AWS credentials, adding steps to retrieval.

Provenance

Source

NASA, via the AWS Open Data platform.

Collection Method

Simulated product based on the expected characteristics of the SWOT mission's KaRIn instrument.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Simulated data focused on the North America continent.