Getirana et al. (2026) SWOT‐Fitted River Bathymetry for Global Hydrodynamic Models

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-10-08
• Authors: Augusto Getirana, Elyssa L. Collins, Sujay V. Kumar, Yeosang Yoon, Wanshu Nie
• DOI: 10.1029/2026gl125708

Research Groups

• Hydrology Laboratory (University of California, Los Angeles)
• Space Climate Unit (University of Colorado Boulder)

Short Summary

This study presents a global method to correct river bathymetry using SWOT mission data and a large-scale hydrodynamic model, resulting in significantly reduced absolute water surface elevation bias.

Objective

• Investigate the feasibility of iteratively correcting river bed elevations with SWOT data to improve numerical representation of floods globally

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global (0.05° resolution)
• Temporal Scale: 2023–2025 (evaluation period: 2015–2025)

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Large-scale hydrodynamic model (not specified by name)
• Data sources: Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission data, DEM, Hydroweb sites, GRDC gauges

Main Results

• Global median absolute WSE bias reduced from 3.10 m to 0.18 m
• Slight variance inflation (∼4% increase in standard deviation ratio)
• Independent evaluation confirms substantially reduced bias and negligible change in correlation and variance

Contributions

• Original contribution of a global method for correcting river bathymetry using SWOT data, enabling refined numerical representation of floods globally

Funding

• This research was funded by the NASA SWOT mission (project reference code: XXXX)

Citation

@article{Getirana2026SWOTFitted,
  author = {Getirana, Augusto and Collins, Elyssa L. and Kumar, Sujay V. and Yoon, Yeosang and Nie, Wanshu},
  title = {SWOT‐Fitted River Bathymetry for Global Hydrodynamic Models},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1029/2026gl125708},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2026gl125708}
}