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Full catalog/JASON_CS_S6A_L2_ALT_HR_RED_OST_NRT_F
JASON_CS_S6A_L2_ALT_HR_RED_OST_NRT_F·vF·dataset

Sea-surface height, high-res, near real-time (Sentinel-6A)

Sentinel-6A MF Jason-CS L2 P4 Altimeter High Resolution (HR) NRT Reduced Ocean Surface Topography
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 2 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Sea surface height and how far it differs from normal, plus wave height, delivered quickly along with the underlying radar measurements and corrections.

How it's made. Made from the Poseidon-4 radar altimeter on the Sentinel-6A satellite, processed at high resolution and delivered fast (within about 3 hours), with the densest readings trimmed out.

How & where you'd use it. Suited to operational ocean and weather monitoring where speed matters, such as tracking sea state and currents close to real time.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2020-12-07 → ongoing
  • Measured bySentinel-6A (Poseidon-4 Radar Altimeter, AMR-C, DORIS, GNSS RECEIVER)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • 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 L2 high resolution (HR) near real time (NRT; 3-hour latency) altimetry from the Poseidon-4 SAR altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft. It contains Sea Surface Height (SSH), Sea Surface Height Anomalies (SSHA) and Significant Wave Height (SWH), along with 1 Hz Ku-band measurements processed from L1B altimetry including the range, orbital altitude, time, and water vapour. It also includes altimetry corrections, significant wave height and wind-speed from the AMR-C. This release is reduced to exclude the 20 Hz observations that are included in the standard product. The S6A NRT product is analogous to the Jason-3 OGDR product.

Get the data

jason_cs_s6a_l2_alt_hr_red_ost_nrt_f_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="JASON_CS_S6A_L2_ALT_HR_RED_OST_NRT_F",
    version="F",
    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.