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    • SWOT Level 2 Water Mask Pixel Cloud Data Product, Version D

    Metadata Updated: April 9, 2026

    The SWOT Level 2 Water Mask Pixel Cloud Product (SWOT_L2_HR_PIXC_D) provides high-resolution, geolocated observations of terrestrial surface water pixels detected by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) onboard the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. This product contains the foundational “pixel cloud” data from which hydrologic features such as rivers, lakes, floodplains, and wetlands are later identified and analyzed in higher-level products. The PIXC product provides the unstructured point cloud of water detections at full instrument resolution (~15–25 m cross-track, ~5–10 m along-track), supporting fine-scale hydrologic analyses and applications such as water body delineation, flood mapping, and change detection. Each granule represents one KaRIn high-rate tile (~64 × 64 km²), corresponding to either the left or right half of the instrument swath. It includes individual water pixel detections with associated geodetic coordinates, ellipsoidal heights, normalized radar backscatter, and classification flags indicating surface type (e.g., land, water, ice, or layover). Pixel heights are referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid and are not corrected for solid Earth tides, ocean tides, or pole tides like KaRIn low-rate oceanography products. Users may apply additional processing or corrections depending on the intended scientific use. Data are distributed in NetCDF-4 format and follow Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions. The PIXC product is complemented by an auxiliary pixel cloud product (PIXCVec) that provides a less noisy, height-constrained geolocation of the observed water pixels and identifies associated river and lake features in the SWOT Prior River & Lake Databases (PRD & PLD). Together they support the derivation of higher-level, featured based River and Lake hydrology products from SWOT.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 29, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 29, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026
    Publisher Jet Propulsion Laboratory;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/SWOT-PIXC-D
    Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id cf987f08-bcbe-4967-b069-7895a4c76b52
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90}
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 68d83fb4c27782c7440fca440e45d65f5e434dea49f36a97d747a41582f1c62b
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial

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