The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission sample L2 data products and the associated documents for both oceanography and hydrology. These sample data products have been provided by the SWOT project and generated by the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) algorithm teams. This release of sample data products is intended to enable users to become familiar with the format and content of the expected science data products from the SWOT mission. These products should not be used in any way to interpret performance of the inflight data or to perform scientific analyses.

The SWOT sample data products can be found here, along with the SWOT project Release Note. Users may download individual sample data based on the data product of interest, from the data product table, or download the entire collection of sample data products as a zip.

The SWOT satellite is currently scheduled for launch in 2022 with a nominal mission lifetime of 3 years, and has a nominal 21-day repeat period during its science phase. The SWOT mission has two primary science objectives: (1) Oceanography: Characterize the ocean mesoscale and sub-mesoscale circulation at spatial resolutions of 15-1000 km. (2) Hydrology: Provide a global inventory of all terrestrial water bodies whose surface area exceeds 250×250 m² (lakes, reservoirs, wetlands), and rivers whose width exceeds 100 m.

Questions and feedback regarding the sample data products should be referred to podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov. The JPL and CNES algorithm team will respond to questions/feedback on the data products on a best efforts basis.

For more information on the SWOT mission or data products, please visit the NASA SWOT mission page and/or the PO.DAAC SWOT mission page.