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

The SWOT Level 2 Water Mask Pixel Cloud Auxiliary Data Product (SWOT_L2_HR_PIXCVec_D) provides per-feature attributes for surface water bodies identified from the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) measurements collected by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. This auxiliary product complements the Level 2 Pixel Cloud (PIXC) product by assigning individual water pixels to hydrologic features such as river reaches and lakes, and summarizing key scalar quantities for each feature.

Each granule corresponds to one KaRIn high-rate tile (~64 × 64 km²), covering either the left or right swath, and contains georeferenced attributes for each identified water body. These include averaged and derived quantities such as water surface height, area, width, and slope, along with identifiers that enable linkage to external hydrologic databases and to features in other SWOT data products. The data are distributed in NetCDF-4 format and follow Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions.

The PIXCVec product is designed to support hydrologic analysis by structuring the raw pixel cloud data (PIXC) into meaningful, feature-based summaries. It enables downstream applications such as river discharge estimation and time series analysis of water surface elevation for lakes and rivers, and is particularly useful for studies requiring consistent tracking of water body features over time.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated November 5, 2026, 08:55 (UTC)
Created April 28, 2025, 05:39 (UTC)
Identifier 10.5067/SWOT-PIXCVEC-D
Modified 2026-11-02T22:15:59Z
Theme {"Earth Science"}
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 2db17a6c-14bc-48d3-b4eb-1d6a85692d64
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
programCode {026:000}
publisher Jet Propulsion Laboratory;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash cdf7d4baab0da58a02426c05903311d642db8024fee0e90636f4613161da8184
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90}]]