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Full catalog/JASON_CS_S6A_L1A_ALT_HR_NTC_G01
JASON_CS_S6A_L1A_ALT_HR_NTC_G01·vG01·dataset

Raw high-resolution sea-height radar readings (Sentinel-6A)

Sentinel-6A MF Jason-CS L1A P4 Altimeter High Resolution (HR) NTC Intermediate Outputs with Instrument Calibrations G01
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 1A netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Raw, geo-located bursts of high-resolution radar echoes bounced off the sea surface, with all instrument calibrations applied. These are the unprocessed building blocks behind sea surface height measurements.

How it's made. A very low-level Level-1A product from the Poseidon-4 radar altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich satellite, in the delayed, fully reprocessed (60-day latency) version.

How & where you'd use it. An expert-level input for generating sea surface height products; most users work with the finished height data rather than these raw radar waveforms.

What's measured

OCEANS › SEA SURFACE TOPOGRAPHY › SEA SURFACE HEIGHTOCEANS › OCEAN WAVES › SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2020-11-30 → ongoing
  • Measured bySentinel-6A (Poseidon-4 Radar Altimeter, AMR-C, DORIS, GNSS RECEIVER, GNSS-RO RECEIVER, Star Tracker)
  • Processing levelLevel 1A
  • Spatial extent-180, -66.15, 180, 66.15
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

Provides reprocessed L1A high resolution (HR) non-time critical (NTC; 60-day latency) altimetry intermediate outputs from the Poseidon-4 SAR altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft, which are geo-located bursts of Ku-band echoes (at ~140 Hz) with all instrument calibrations applied and full rate complex waveforms for delay/Doppler or HR processing. The S6A NTC product is analogous to the Jason-3 GDR product.

Get the data

jason_cs_s6a_l1a_alt_hr_ntc_g01_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="JASON_CS_S6A_L1A_ALT_HR_NTC_G01",
    version="G01",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.