Published June 20, 2026 | Version v1.0
Dataset Open

A Compilation of Water Surface Elevation Time Series from Global Lake Gauges

Description

Contacts: Mélanie Trudel (melanie.trudel@usherbrooke.ca), Jida Wang (jidaw@illinois.edu) 

 

Citations

We request that users of this dataset cite both items below:

Trudel, M., Wang, J., Biancamaria, S., Harlan, M.E., Shah, D., Gao, H., Collins, E., Getirana, A., Song, C., Reis Alencar Oliveira, R., Gosset, M., Rodrigues Martins, E.S., Fleischmann, A., Hymans, D., Grippa, M., Girard, F., Kergoat, L., Pottier, C., Fjørtoft, R., Oubanas, H., & Pavelsky, T.M. (2026). A Heuristic Adaptive Filter for SWOT Lake Vector Data Products [Preprint]. Water Resources Research, in review, https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.15007657/v1. 

Trudel, M., Wang, J., Biancamaria, S., Harlan, M. E., Shah, D., Gao, H., Collins, E., Getirana, A., Song, C., Reis Alencar Oliveira, R., Gosset, M., Rodrigues Martins, E. S., Fleischmann, A., Hymans, D., Grippa, M., Girard, F., Kergoat, L., Pottier, C., Fjørtoft, R., Oubanas, H., & Pavelsky, T.M. (2026). A Compilation of Water Surface Elevation Time Series from Global Lake Gauges (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20781336.

 

Data overview and usage

This dataset contains gauge measurements, primarily water surface elevation (WSE) time series, from more than 1,200 lake gauges across nine countries, compiled through an international collaborative effort (Table 1). Most records overlap at least part of the period from July 2023 to May 2025, and some records extend beyond this window. Temporal coverage, continuity, and sampling frequency vary among lakes and regions.

This dataset was compiled to support validation of the Heuristic Adaptive Lake Filter (HALF) for SWOT vector lake products, as reported in Trudel et al. (2026, https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.15007657/v1). It is released here as a companion dataset to the HALF code package and is intended to support the validation workflow implemented in half_v1_validation.py. The HALF code package is available through the GitHub repository at https://github.com/LARIC-jw/HALF, and the archived v1.0 code release is available through Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20782248.

Users may also use this gauge-data collection for other relevant research and applications, provided that the dataset is properly cited (see Citations above) and that use complies with the terms and conditions of the original data sources. This release represents version 1.0 of the dataset.

Detailed information on regions, countries, lake counts, temporal frequency, and data sources is summarized in Table 1. Overall, the included lakes span a wide range of sizes, from approximately 0.01 km2 to more than 57,000 km2.

Additional details on data access, preprocessing, formatting, and source-specific considerations are provided in the log files within each regional data folder. Further processing and validation details are available in Trudel et al. (2026, https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.15007657/v1).

 

Table 1. Description of the collected lake gauge data

Region

Lake (PLD) count

Temporal frequency

Data sources

Canada

282

Hourly

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Centre d'expertise hydrique du Québec (CEHQ), Hydro-Québec (HQ), and University of Sherbrooke

US

284

Hourly

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) (Harlan et al., 2026)

Norway

232

Hourly

Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (Norges vassdrags-og energidirektorat (NVE))

Switzerland

29

Hourly

Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (Bundesamt für Umwelt (BAFU))

China

38

Daily (inconsecutive)

China Water and Rain Information website (http://xxfb.mwr.cn/sq_dxsk.html)

Burkina Faso

1

Sub-hourly to hourly

Specifically in situ set-up for SWOT cal/val (Girard et al. 2025)   

Niger

1

Sub-hourly to hourly

Analyse Multidisciplinaire de la Mousson Africaine - Couplage de l’Atmosphère Tropicale et du Cycle Hydrologique (AMMA-CATCH) observatory (Girard et al. 2025)

Amazonia, Brazil

6

Daily to hourly

Instituto Mamirauá, Brazil

Ceará, Brazil

8

Sub-hourly

Ceará Institute of Meteorology and Water Resources (Funceme)

Other Brazil

63

Daily

Operador Nacional do Sistema Elétrico (ONS; https://www.ons.org.br)

India

304

Daily (inconsecutive)

Water Resources Information System of India (https://indiawris.gov.in/wris/#/), containing in situ data from multiple agencies (Central Water Commission (CWC), Andhra Pradesh Water Resources Information and Management System (APWRIMS), and Government of Gujarat (Gujarat)).

Total

1,248

 

 

 

Files

global_lake_gauge_data.zip

Files (135.3 MB)

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md5:09e8372a64b67c4514fda2f5d5610659
135.3 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Dates

Available
2026-06-20

References

  • Girard, F., Kergoat, L., Mainassara, I., Wubda, M., Nikiema, D. E., Touré, A. A., ... & Grippa, M. (2025). Performance of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission for Monitoring Small Lakes in West Africa. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2025.3570859
  • Harlan, M.E., Bjerklie, D.M., Eggleston, J.R., Riggs, R.M., and Zwart, J.A. (2026). Paired Water Surface Elevation Data in the United States and Canada from the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Satellite and In Situ Gage Data from 2023 to 2025. U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P1FE9W9E.
  • Trudel, M., Wang, J., Biancamaria, S., Harlan, M.E., Shah, D., Gao, H., Collins, E., Getirana, A., Song, C., Reis Alencar Oliveira, R., Gosset, M., Rodrigues Martins, E.S., Fleischmann, A., Hymans, D., Grippa, M., Girard, F., Kergoat, L., Pottier, C., Fjørtoft, R., Oubanas, H., & Pavelsky, T.M. (2026). A Heuristic Adaptive Filter for SWOT Lake Vector Data Products [Preprint]. Water Resources Research, in review, https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.15007657/v1.