SWOT Pixel Cloud Vector

The SWOT Level-2 HR Pixel Cloud Vector dataset provides points cloud of water mask pixels (“pixel cloud”) from the High Rate data stream of the SWOT KaRIn instrument with geolocated heights, classification mask, geophysical fields, and flags at 20m resolution on average.

The SWOT Level-2 HR Pixel Cloud Vector dataset provides auxiliary information for SWOT Level-2 HR Pixel Cloud dataset indicating to which water bodies the pixels are assigned as identified in the SWOT Prior River Database or in the SWOT Prior Lake Database datasets. It also includes height-constrained pixel geolocation after reach- or lake-scale averaging (please see the corresponding Technical Note).
The dataset was generated by the SWOT Mission Center but may be simulated using the SWOT Hydrology Toolbox Open Source tools.

The SWOT Level-2 HR Pixel Cloud Vector dataset is organized into swath-aligned tiles. Each of these tiles nominally contains data over 64 km x 64 km.

Major SWOT product versions are called “baseline”. Currently, on our platform, you can download and manipulate products from both baseline C and D. Baseline C covers the period from March 28, 2023 to May 05, 2025. After this date, only baseline D products are available. A global reprocessing is on-going to produce baseline D products for the full SWOT activity period. Baseline D products are progressively made available so you might find some gap in baseline D until the end of the reprocessing.

General, global and up-to-date information on SWOT products can be find in the SWOT User Handbook. For a focus on how to distinguish between Baseline C and D products along with most significant changes in products, please refer to the and the slides. Finally, you will find below links to the Product Description Document (PDD) for a thorough look at the product: