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

    Metadata Updated: July 10, 2025

    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: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 29, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date July 10, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 29, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date July 10, 2025
    Publisher Jet Propulsion Laboratory;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/SWOT-PIXC-D
    Data Last Modified 2025-07-09
    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 1698037a-e866-43f8-a380-b0a252a427b2
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90}
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 1b654773698af73383a9c66ae8282996cdb9f979065b858f72890c4c47d372d6
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial

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