Sentinel-3 Radar Altimetry Water Surface Elevation in the Zambezi Catchment

Full Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B radar altimetry records for water surface elevation in the Zambezi catchment. The dataset includes virtual stations containing at least 80% of expected observations and predominantly single-peak waveforms, as presented by Cécile Marie Margaretha Kittel of the Technical University of Denmark in 2020. A shapefile with all Sentinel-3 virtual stations in the Zambezi is also included.

Use Cases

• Monitoring river water levels over time based on radar altimetry records.
• Catchment-scale evaluation of satellite-derived water surface elevation.
• Validating hydrodynamic models using virtual station elevation data.
• Assessing data availability and quality for specific river reaches based on the 80% observation threshold.

Strengths

• Includes data from both Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites.
• Covers the entire Zambezi catchment.
• Filters for virtual stations with at least 80% of expected observations.
• Associated shapefile provides geospatial context for all virtual stations.

Limitations

• Not all virtual stations have been manually checked or validated.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and temporal coverage are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Technical University of Denmark

Collection Method

Satellite radar altimetry from the Sentinel-3 mission.

Geography

Zambezi catchment