Map of where surface water is, as an image (SWOT) — SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_2.0

In plain English

What it measures. Map images of where surface water is and how high its surface sits, including water extent, water surface elevation, and the fraction of each grid cell covered by water, at 100 m and 250 m resolution.

How it's made. Derived from the KaRIn radar interferometer on the SWOT satellite, which measures water-surface height and extent, packaged as gridded raster scenes.

How & where you'd use it. Used to map rivers, lakes, and floods and to track how the height and area of surface water change, supporting water-resource and flood studies.

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
StatusSUPERSEDED

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 Raster Image Data Product from the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission provides global surface water elevation and inundation extent derived from high rate (HR) measurements from the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) on SWOT. SWOT launched on December 16, 2022 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California into a 1-day repeat orbit for the "calibration" or "fast-sampling" phase of the mission, which completed in early July 2023. After the calibration phase, SWOT entered a 21-day repeat orbit in August 2023 to start the "science" phase of the mission, which is expected to continue through 2025. Water surface elevation, area, water fraction, backscatter, geophysical information are provided in geographically fixed scenes at resolutions of 100 m and 250 m in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection. Available in netCDF-4 file format. On-demand processing available to users for different resolutions, sampling grids, scene sizes, and file formats. Please note that this collection contains SWOT Version C science data products. This dataset is the parent collection to the following sub-collections: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_100m_2.0 https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_250m_2.0

Get the data

swot_l2_hr_raster_2.0_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_2.0",
    version="2.0",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links