Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/sentinel-2-gri-l1c
sentinel-2-gri-l1c·dataset

Geometric reference red-band image layer (Copernicus)

Sentinel-2 GRI L1C
land ESA ESA Copernicus
In plain English

What it measures. A red-band reference image plus quality masks, built to give very accurate, consistent positioning so other images can be aligned against it.

How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus as a Level-1C Global Reference Image derived from Sentinel-2's red band for improved geometric consistency.

How & where you'd use it. A behind-the-scenes calibration product used to keep Sentinel-2 imagery precisely geo-located, rather than something for direct viewing.

What's measured

ECESAEUGlobalSentinelSentinel-2GRI

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-07-06 → 2018-09-06
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The Sentinel-2 GRI STAC collection provides a multi-layer Level-1C “Global Reference Image” composed of B04 (red) band plus corresponding quality masks, derived from a multi-layer L1B GRI for improved geometric consistency.

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
    collections=["sentinel-2-gri-l1c"],   # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),             # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items())            # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray
Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.