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Full catalog/S6A_RO_2__NRT_NC__
S6A_RO_2__NRT_NC__·v1·dataset

Atmosphere profiles from bending GPS signals (Sentinel-6A, near-real-time)

Sentinel-6A Level 2 GNSS Radio Occultation Near-Real-Time V1 (S6A_RO_2__NRT_NC__) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Vertical profiles of the atmosphere — refractivity, temperature and humidity — at the spots where the satellite watched a GPS signal pass through the air, delivered quickly for near-real-time use.

How it's made. Generated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the Sentinel-6A satellite using radio occultation: as a GPS signal grazes the atmosphere on its way to the satellite, the bending of that signal is turned into atmospheric measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Feeds weather-forecasting models and helps track temperature and humidity changes in the lower and middle atmosphere; the fast turnaround makes it suited to operational forecasting.

What's measured

CLIMATE INDICATORS › ATMOSPHERIC/OCEAN INDICATORS › TEMPERATURE INDICATORS › TEMPERATURE VARIABILITYSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADIO WAVECLIMATE INDICATORS › ATMOSPHERIC/OCEAN INDICATORS › TEMPERATURE INDICES › COMMON SENSE CLIMATE INDEXSUN-EARTH INTERACTIONS › SOLAR ENERGETIC PARTICLE FLUX › ELECTRON FLUXSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › SENSOR CHARACTERISTICS › GEOLOCATIONSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › SENSOR CHARACTERISTICS › PHASE AND AMPLITUDESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVECLIMATE INDICATORS › ATMOSPHERIC/OCEAN INDICATORS › TEMPERATURE INDICES

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2020-11-28 → ongoing
  • Measured bySentinel-6A (RO)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

This dataset provides the L2 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio-Occultation (RO) Near-Real-Time (NRT) retrieval generated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich. The main retrieval variables in this dataset are refractivity, temperature, and humidity. Each granule is for one RO and represented by the nominal geodetic reference location for the occultation, where the latitude and longitude are associated with the moment when the line-of-sight connecting the receiver and transmitter satellites just touches the reference ellipsoid. Sentinel 6 is a collaborative mission between NASA's JPL and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), with participation from European Space Agency (ESA), the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) of France. These organizations will deliver an operational mission as part of a two-satellite European Copernicus/Sentinel program. The Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich Jason-CS (Sentinel-6A) was launched in November 21, 2020. One objective of Sentinel 6 is to collect high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature and humidity, using GNSS RO sounding technique, to assess temperature and humidity changes in the troposphere and stratosphere and to support numerical weather prediction.

Get the data

s6a_ro_2__nrt_nc___access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="S6A_RO_2__NRT_NC__",
    version="1",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.