SWOT Single Pass River - Reach

The SWOT Level-2 HR River Single Pass - Reach dataset provides vectorized river data - including water surface elevation, water surface slope, river width, water surface area, change in cross-sectional area from a reference value, and discharge - from the High Resolution data stream of the SWOT KaRIn instrument, along with appropriate uncertainties and flags. It has been resampled onto approximately 10km river reaches defined in the SWOT Prior River Database dataset.

This dataset is also available at higher resolution in the SWOT Level-2 HR River Single Pass - Node dataset. Reaches are divided into nodes along the reach centerline with a node-to-node spacing of approximately 200 meters. This higher resolution dataset however provides only water surface elevation, width and area.

The dataset was generated by the SWOT Mission Center but may be simulated using the SWOT RiverObs Open Source tools.

The SWOT Level-2 HR River Single Pass - Reach dataset is provided in full-swath pass granules covering individual continents. Note: a granule covers a swath that is approximately 128 km wide in cross track. A pass is a half revolution of the Earth by the satellite from pole to pole.

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) and Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) for a thorough look at the product: