SWOT L2 River Nodes: Water Elevation, Slope, Width, and Discharge

SWOT Level 2 River Single-Pass Vector Node Data Product provides water surface elevation, slope, width, and discharge for river nodes spaced approximately 200 meters apart. The data are derived from the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) on the SWOT satellite, which launched on December 16, 2022, and entered its science phase in August 2023. This Version C product is distributed as ESRI Shapefiles covering the full satellite swath for each continent-pass.

Use Cases

• Modeling river discharge based on satellite-derived water surface elevation and slope.
• Monitoring changes in river width over time for environmental and flood studies.
• Validating hydrodynamic models using geospatial vector data of river nodes.
• Analyzing continental-scale surface water processes from the SWOT mission's 21-day repeat orbit data.

Strengths

• Data originates from the dedicated Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, launched on December 16, 2022.
• Provides specific, high-resolution measurements for river nodes at approximately 200-meter spacing.
• Dataset is hosted on multiple authoritative platforms (Data.gov, NASA Earthdata), indicating established provenance.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting across sources: column names, row counts, and exact license terms are not specified.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-04-09 appears to be a future date, casting doubt on metadata accuracy.
• Dataset is a sub-collection focusing only on river nodes, which may limit analyses requiring full river reach context.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), SWOT mission.

Collection Method

Derived from the high rate (HR) data stream of the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) on the SWOT satellite.

Time Range

From satellite launch (December 16, 2022) through the expected science phase (through 2025).

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:51:04.571012 (Note: This is a future date, which may be an error.)

Geography

Global, covering inland and coastal hydrology surfaces within the SWOT satellite swath.