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Full catalog/SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_D
SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_D·vD·dataset

River width, height and slope from space (SWOT)

SWOT Level 2 River Single-Pass Vector Data Product, Version D
hydrosphere NASA POCLOUD Level 2 Shapefile
In plain English

What it measures. For rivers around the world, this reports the water surface height, slope, width, surface area, and estimated flow (discharge) along defined stretches and points. Each measurement is tied to a known river segment from a global river map.

How it's made. It comes from the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) aboard the SWOT satellite; detailed radar pixel detections are aggregated to river segments and delivered as map-ready shapefiles.

How & where you'd use it. Hydrologists, water managers, and flood forecasters use it to monitor how rivers rise, fall, and flow over time, even in places without ground gauges.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › STAGE HEIGHTTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURES › RIVERS/STREAMSTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › TOTAL SURFACE WATERTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › DISCHARGE/FLOW

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
  • FormatsShapefile
  • 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 River Single-Pass Vector Data Product (SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_D) provides hydrologic measurements for predefined river reaches and nodes, derived from high-resolution radar observations collected by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) aboard the SWOT satellite. This product reports water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge estimates for each reach, along with corresponding node-level details. All features are defined by the Prior River Database (PRD), which encodes river geometry and topology across global basins. Each granule covers a single satellite pass over one or more continents and includes two ESRI shapefiles: one for river reaches (as polylines) and one for nodes (as points). Shapefile attributes include both SWOT-derived measurements and metadata from the PRD. Water surface elevations are referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid and are corrected for geoid height and solid Earth, load, and pole tides. Measurements are aggregated from lower-level pixel detections (PIXC product) assigned to hydrologic features via the auxiliary PIXCVec product. The product also includes consensus and algorithm-specific river discharge estimates, both unconstrained and constrained by historical gauge data. The RiverSP product provides reach-scale hydrologic variables suitable for analyzing inland water dynamics, estimating discharge, and monitoring river changes over time. It enables direct integration with the PRD-defined river network and supports applications in large-scale hydrologic modeling, basin monitoring, and water resource management. Data are distributed in shapefile format with metadata and attribute definitions aligned to GIS and hydrologic standards. This dataset is the parent collection to the following sub-collections: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_node_D https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_reach_D

Get the data

swot_l2_hr_riversp_d_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_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.