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

Ocean winds and waves from radar (Sentinel-1B)

Sentinel-1B Ocean Product
ocean NASA ASF Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Ocean conditions derived from radar — wind across the sea surface, swell (wave) patterns, and the speed of water moving toward or away from the satellite. Which of these are included depends on how the radar was operating.

How it's made. Produced from the Sentinel-1B satellite's C-band radar, which works day and night through clouds, with these ocean measurements calculated from its raw radar images.

How & where you'd use it. Supports monitoring of ocean winds, waves, and currents for marine forecasting and research. (The Sentinel-1B mission ended in 2022 after a power fault.)

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2016-04-25 → 2021-12-24
  • Measured bySentinel-1B (C-SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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-1B, the second satellite in the Sentinel-1 constellation, was launched April 25, 2016. 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. The spacecraft experienced an anomaly related to the instrument electronics power supply provided by the satellite platform, leaving it unable to deliver radar data on 23 December 2021, as a consequence, ESA and the European Commission announced the end of the Sentinel-1B mission on August 3, 2022. Sentinel-1B Level 2 Ocean (OCN) are geolocated geophysical products derived from the Sentinel -1B 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 data products in this collection mirror the Sentinel-1B products provided through the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SENTINEL-1B_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.