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Full catalog/SWOT_L4_HR_DAWG_SOS_DISCHARGE_V3
SWOT_L4_HR_DAWG_SOS_DISCHARGE_V3·v3·dataset

How much water rivers carry (SWOT)

SWOT Level 4 Sword of Science River Discharge Products, Version 3
hydrosphere NASA POCLOUD Level 4 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Estimates of how much water rivers are carrying (their flow, or discharge), for river stretches and points along them, including time series over the measurement period.

How it's made. Calculated by the SWOT mission's science team from the satellite's river water-surface measurements, combined with global hydrology models and, in some versions, ground gauge data.

How & where you'd use it. Supports water-supply planning, flood and drought monitoring, and research on how much freshwater the world's rivers move.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › GROUND WATER › GROUND WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › DISCHARGE › DISCHARGE AMOUNTTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › GROUND WATER › GROUND WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › DRAINAGE › DRAINAGE AMOUNTTERRESTRIAL 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 › RUNOFF › TOTAL RUNOFF

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-03-29 → ongoing
  • Measured bySWOT (KaRIn)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • 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 Sword of Science River Discharge Products dataset from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and produced by the Discharge Algorithm Working Group (DAWG), provides estimates of river discharge derived from the SWOT Level 2 River Single-Pass Vector Data Product, and includes both unconstrained and gauge constrained estimates that leverage in-situ measurements. The SWOT mission is implemented jointly by NASA and Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) to provide valuable data and information about the world's oceans and its terrestrial surface water such as lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Sword of Science data products are generated from the open-source SWOT Confluence program and contain river discharge parameter estimates as well as discharge time series for both river reaches and river nodes, following the SWOT River Database (SWORD) structure. Granules from both constrained and unconstrained branches are composed of prior information (e.g., mean annual flow predicted by global hydrological models) and the resulting discharge estimates. Priors and results files for both constrained and unconstrained branches are available in netCDF format. Users are encouraged to reference the SWOT Confluence documentation and notebook tutorials for full documentation of the data structure and variables available. Development of the SWOT Confluence program as well as the Sword of Science data products was funded by NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) program.

Get the data

swot_l4_hr_dawg_sos_discharge_v3_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SWOT_L4_HR_DAWG_SOS_DISCHARGE_V3",
    version="3",
    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.