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Full catalog/JASON_CS_S6A_L1B_ALT_HR_NTC_G01
JASON_CS_S6A_L1B_ALT_HR_NTC_G01·vG01·dataset

Raw radar altimeter pulses for measuring sea height (Sentinel-6A)

Sentinel-6A MF Jason-CS L1B P4 Altimeter High Resolution (HR) NTC Geolocated Waveforms G01
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 1B netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. The processed radar echoes that a satellite altimeter bounces off the sea surface, used to figure out the height of the ocean. These are the calibrated, location-tagged radar 'waveforms' rather than finished sea-height numbers.

How it's made. Produced from the Poseidon-4 radar altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich satellite, reprocessed into calibrated high-resolution waveforms with about a 60-day delay.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block product that feeds higher-level sea-surface-height and ocean datasets; most people use it indirectly through those finished products rather than directly.

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)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • 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 L1B high resolution (HR) non-time critical (NTC; 60-day latency) altimetry data from the Poseidon-4 SAR altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft which include the geolocated, fully SAR processed and calibrated multi-looked HR Ku-band waveforms. The S6A NTC product is analogous to the Jason-3 GDR product.

Get the data

jason_cs_s6a_l1b_alt_hr_ntc_g01_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="JASON_CS_S6A_L1B_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.