SWOT L2 NALT GDR: Sea Surface Height and Wave Data

Data from the SWOT mission's Poseidon-3C altimeter, launched December 16, 2022, provides measurements along the satellite's ground track. The dataset contains sea surface height, significant wave height, and wind speed measurements at two sampling resolutions: approximately 6-km at 1Hz and 300-m at 20Hz. It is processed using restituted auxiliary data and Precise Orbit Ephemeris (POE) and is distributed in netCDF-4 format with a latency of less than 90 days.

Use Cases

• Monitoring ocean surface topography and circulation based on sea surface height measurements.
• Analyzing wave climate and extreme sea states using significant wave height data.
• Studying air-sea interactions and wind patterns from the altimeter-derived wind speed.
• Validating and calibrating oceanographic models with high-resolution along-track data.

Strengths

• Provides data from a joint NASA-CNES mission with a specific launch date of December 16, 2022.
• Offers dual sampling resolutions (1Hz/~6km and 20Hz/~300m) for detailed along-track analysis.
• Data is processed with precise orbit ephemeris, suggesting high positional accuracy.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size (row count, file size) are not provided in the available metadata.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit details on reuse terms.
• The dataset's structure involves parent and sub-collections, which may complicate data discovery and access.

Provenance

Source

Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a joint project of NASA and CNES.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the Poseidon-3C nadir altimeter.

Time Range

From mission launch (December 16, 2022) onward; data latency is < 90 days.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:52:28.001823

Geography

Global coverage along the satellite's ground track over oceans and inland water bodies.