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

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated February 10, 2026, 03:19 (UTC)
Created April 28, 2025, 05:39 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 51fef35a-4c3d-4e40-9854-2e3a43461c03
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/SWOT-PIXC-D
landingPage https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/web-misc/swot_mission_docs/D-109532_SWOT_UserHandbook_RevA_20250311_sig-final.pdf
modified 2026-02-09
programCode {026:000}
publisher Jet Propulsion Laboratory;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash b3022b618ae8aa392cfdb06e84fee65dd9ef917483b9ebddca9cca8a7df8b0ea
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN",[{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90}]]
temporal 2022-12-16/2022-12-16
theme {"Earth Science"}