Daily river water levels worldwide (Copernicus)
What it measures. Tracks the height of river surfaces, given in metres above a standard reference level, at locations across the globe.
How it's made. Captured by satellite radar altimeters and provided near real time as map data points by the EU's Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, with data going back to 2002.
How & where you'd use it. Useful for following river levels over time to support flood warning, drought assessment, and water management, especially where ground gauges are scarce.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2008-07-12 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-177.94, -53.93, 179.66, 74.05
- FormatsGeoJSON
What you can do with it
- Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
- Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
- Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description
Defined as the height, in meters above the geoid, of the reflecting surface of continental water bodies. It is observed by space radar altimeters and data are available at global scale in near real time in vector format with the temporal extent from 2002 to present.
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["clms_wl-rivers_global_vector_daily_v2"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC