SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_D provides rasterized estimates of water surface elevation, inundation extent, and radar backscatter from the SWOT satellite's KaRIn instrument. The product aggregates irregular pixel cloud data onto a uniform geographic grid, with standard granules covering 128 × 128 km² scenes at 100 m and 250 m resolution. It is produced by POCLOUD and distributed via NASA's Earthdata platform.
Use Cases
- Hydrologic analysis of water surface elevation changes based on the corrected elevation layers.
- Mapping flood inundation extent over time based on the water fraction and surface area data.
- Geomorphic studies of river systems and coastal zones based on the spatially aggregated, gridded water mask.
- Integrating consistent water surface data with other geospatial models based on the uniform grid format.
Strengths
- Data is derived from high-resolution radar observations by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) on the SWOT satellite.
- Standard granules provide consistent spatial sampling over non-overlapping 128 × 128 km² scenes.
- Product includes quality flags and uncertainty estimates for the derived water surface parameters.
- On-demand versions allow for user-specified resolutions, projections, and output formats like GeoTIFF.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- POCLOUD, distributed via NASA's Earthdata/PODAAC platform.
- Collection Method
- Derived from high-resolution radar observations by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) on the SWOT satellite and aggregated from pixel cloud products.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Global coverage of inland, estuarine, and coastal water domains.