The current state of the SWOT discharge product

The SWOT Discharge Algorithm Working Group (DAWG) is part of the SWOT Science Team and is charged with creating and maintaining SWOT discharge products. Here, DAWG members will present the latest discharge data to be generated the week before the meeting, and we will discuss the skill, spatiotemporal coverage, and context of these discharge estimates. We will ideally discuss both constrained (using gauges for calibration/priors) and unconstrained (no gauges used) discharge products and the differences therein. Preliminary results at the time of writing (Jan 2025) show mean discharges that conform to expectations of global river patterns while also revealing interesting deviations from prior knowledge. Skill is largely consistent with pre launch expectations, with bias dominating the error budget and strong correlation as validated at gauges. The presentation will convey the most up to date results, which have advanced rapidly since SWOT data were made public and will likely change again before this talk is given. Finally, SWOT’s spatiotemporal resolution has always meant that SWOT alone cannot be a panacea for discharge in ungauged basins- we will discuss what SWOT does and doesn’t bring to basin-scale analyses.