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	November 5, 2026, 08:54 (UTC)
Created	April 28, 2025, 05:39 (UTC)
Identifier	10.5067/SWOT-PIXC-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	23ce150e-e882-414b-9c67-60ad357350ea
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	adfcf238ca62ef851efb595a5ff6a1db16aab00430bdff1700be81cfbb7d7795
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90}]]