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Full catalog/SENTINEL-1A_META_OCN
SENTINEL-1A_META_OCN·v1·dataset

Catalog info for radar ocean scenes (Sentinel-1A)

Sentinel-1A Ocean Product Metadata
ocean NASA ASF Level Not provided active
In plain English

What it measures. Catalog-style descriptive information about Sentinel-1A radar ocean scenes, not the imagery itself, covering products that estimate ocean wind, waves, and surface motion.

How it's made. These are ISO-standard XML metadata files created by the Alaska Satellite Facility to describe Sentinel-1A's C-band radar ocean (OCN) products.

How & where you'd use it. A lookup tool for finding and understanding which radar ocean scenes exist and what they contain, used as a stepping stone to the actual wind, wave, and current data.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN WINDSOCEANS › OCEAN WAVES › SWELLSOCEANS › OCEAN CIRCULATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-04-03 → ongoing
  • Measured bySentinel-1A (C-SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel Not provided
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

Sentinel-1A, the first satellite in the Sentinel-1 constellation, was launched April 3, 2014. The Sentinel-1 satellites (Sentinel-1A, Sentinel-1B, and Sentinel-1C) are sun-synchronous polar-orbiting satellites that operate day and night performing C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. The Sentinel-1 satellites operate in four imaging modes with different resolutions (down to 5 meters) and coverage (up to 400 kilometers). The Sentinel-1 satellites provide dual polarization capability and short revisit times. Sentinel-1A Level 2 Ocean (OCN) are geolocated geophysical products derived from the Sentinel -1C Single Look Complex (SLC) and Ground Range Detected (GRD) products. OCN products for wind, wave and currents applications may contain the following geophysical components derived from the SAR data: Ocean Wind field (OWI) Ocean Swell spectra (OSW) Surface Radial Velocity (RVL) The availability of components depends on the acquisition mode. The metadata referring to OWI are derived from an internally processed GRD product, the metadata referring to RVL and OSW are derived from an internally processed SLC product. The OWI component is a ground range gridded estimate of the surface wind speed and direction at 10 m above the surface, derived from SM, IW or EW modes. The products in this collection are ISO compliant XML metadata created by the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center from the associated Sentinel-1A SAFE format product.

Get the data

sentinel-1a_meta_ocn_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SENTINEL-1A_META_OCN",
    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 ASF
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.