SWOT Level 2: Global Water Elevation and Extent Raster

From December 2022 onward, the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission provides global raster data on surface water elevation and inundation extent. The Level 2 Water Mask product, derived from KaRIn high-rate measurements, offers water surface elevation, area, fraction, backscatter, and geophysical information in fixed scenes at 100m and 250m resolutions. On-demand processing is available for different resolutions, grids, scene sizes, and formats.

Use Cases

• Monitoring lake and reservoir water level changes based on water surface elevation data.
• Mapping river inundation extent and area based on water fraction and extent measurements.
• Analyzing seasonal water body dynamics based on geophysical information and backscatter.
• Calibrating hydrological models based on high-resolution (100m/250m) raster scenes.

Strengths

• Provides data from a dedicated satellite mission (SWOT) launched on December 16, 2022.
• Offers on-demand processing for user-defined resolutions, grids, scene sizes, and file formats.
• Contains Version C science data products, indicating a specific processed release.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size (rows, file size) are not provided in the available metadata.
• The dataset is a parent collection to sub-collections; the exact structure of this specific entry is unclear.
• License is listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details.

Provenance

Source

Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn).

Collection Method

Derived from high rate (HR) measurements from the satellite instrument.

Time Range

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

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:50:22.145199

Geography

Global.