ESA River Discharge Climate Change Initiative (RD_cci): Altimetry-based River Discharge product, v1.0 2021

This dataset comprises the altimetry-based river discharge (RD-ALTI) Climate Research Data Package (CRDP), derived from nadir radar altimeter missions by the ESA CCI River Discharge precursor project (RD_cci). It provides long-term satellite river discharge (RD) time series at specified locations (defined in the "Selection of river basins" document, available at https://climate.esa.int/documents/2189/D2_CCI-Discharge-0004-RP_WP2_v1-1.pdf). River discharge (in m3/s) corresponds to the water volume passing through the river cross-section per unit of time. In this dataset, it is computed from a rating curve applied to long-term satellite altimeter water surface elevation (WSE) from https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/c5f0aa806ec444b4a4209b49efc4bb65. The rating curve is obtained by fitting the relationship between in-situ discharge and altimeter WSE with a power law following a Bayesian approach.