SWOT L2 Water Mask: Pixel Cloud Auxiliary Data

SWOT Version C science data provides auxiliary information linking individual pixels to specific rivers and lakes. This point cloud data, covering tiles of approximately 64x64 km², includes height-constrained geolocation after reach- or lake-scale averaging. It is available in netCDF-4 format and supports the classification of water bodies from satellite observations.

Use Cases

• Assigning satellite pixels to specific river reaches or lakes based on the auxiliary water mask.
• Improving geolocation accuracy for water surface height measurements using height-constrained pixel data.
• Analyzing water body extent and connectivity at a half-swath (left or right) scale over 64x64 km² tiles.

Strengths

• Contains SWOT Version C science data products, indicating a specific, processed data version.
• Provides height-constrained pixel geolocation, which suggests post-processed accuracy improvements.
• Covers a defined spatial scale with point cloud data over tiles of approximately 64x64 km².

Limitations

• Column names and a precise row count are not provided in any source, limiting understanding of the data structure.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms.
• One source lists no tags, license, author, or update information, indicating inconsistent metadata completeness.

Provenance

Source

POCLOUD (as listed on one platform)

Collection Method

Satellite observation from the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:47:00.865391

Geography

Global, based on satellite swath coverage over terrestrial water bodies.