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Full catalog/SWOT_L2_HR_PIXCVec_D
SWOT_L2_HR_PIXCVec_D·vD·dataset

Helper data linking water-map pixels to locations (SWOT, ver D)

SWOT Level 2 Water Mask Pixel Cloud Auxiliary Data Product, Version D
hydrosphere NASA POCLOUD Level 2 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Helper data that links individual water-map pixels from SWOT's water observations to specific hydrologic features like river reaches and lakes, with summary values such as water surface height, area, width, and slope for each feature.

How it's made. Produced by the SWOT satellite's Ka-band radar interferometer as an auxiliary product that organizes the raw pixel-cloud water data into feature-based summaries, in roughly 64-km tiles.

How & where you'd use it. Designed to support hydrology work like estimating river flow and tracking water levels in lakes and rivers over time, and to link SWOT measurements to outside water databases. It is a companion to the main water products.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURES › RIVERS/STREAMSTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTSTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURES › LAKES/RESERVOIRS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2022-12-16 → ongoing
  • Measured bySWOT (KaRIn, Jason-class Altimeter, AMR, DORIS, GPSP, LRA)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

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

The SWOT Level 2 Water Mask Pixel Cloud Auxiliary Data Product (SWOT_L2_HR_PIXCVec_D) provides per-feature attributes for surface water bodies identified from the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) measurements collected by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. This auxiliary product complements the Level 2 Pixel Cloud (PIXC) product by assigning individual water pixels to hydrologic features such as river reaches and lakes, and summarizing key scalar quantities for each feature. Each granule corresponds to one KaRIn high-rate tile (~64 × 64 km²), covering either the left or right swath, and contains georeferenced attributes for each identified water body. These include averaged and derived quantities such as water surface height, area, width, and slope, along with identifiers that enable linkage to external hydrologic databases and to features in other SWOT data products. The data are distributed in NetCDF-4 format and follow Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions. The PIXCVec product is designed to support hydrologic analysis by structuring the raw pixel cloud data (PIXC) into meaningful, feature-based summaries. It enables downstream applications such as river discharge estimation and time series analysis of water surface elevation for lakes and rivers, and is particularly useful for studies requiring consistent tracking of water body features over time.

Get the data

swot_l2_hr_pixcvec_d_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SWOT_L2_HR_PIXCVec_D",
    version="D",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.