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Full catalog/sentinel-2-l2a
sentinel-2-l2a·dataset

Atmosphere-corrected multispectral land imagery (Copernicus)

Sentinel-2 Level-2A
land ESA ESA Copernicus AWS Earth Search active
In plain English

What it measures. Multispectral land images corrected to show true surface reflectance with haze removed, bundled with a scene map that flags clouds and shadows plus air quality measures like aerosol and water vapor.

How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus from Sentinel-2 optical data, processed to Level-2A by removing atmospheric effects and aligning images across time and bands.

How & where you'd use it. The go-to product for monitoring crops, forests, water, and land change, since the surface colors are ready to compare across dates.

What's measured

CopernicusSentinelEUESASatelliteGlobalImageryReflectance

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-06-27 → ongoing
  • 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 Level-2A Collection 1 product provides orthorectified Surface Reflectance (Bottom-Of-Atmosphere: BOA), with sub-pixel multispectral and multitemporal registration accuracy. Scene Classification (including Clouds and Cloud Shadows), AOT (Aerosol Optical Thickness) and WV (Water Vapour) maps are included in the product.

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-l2a"],   # 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.
earthsearch_access.pyAWS Earth Search · no login
# AWS Earth Search — anonymous, no login (cloud-optimized on S3)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1")
items = cat.search(
    collections=["sentinel-2-l2a"],
    bbox=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),   # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
).item_collection()
# open assets straight from S3 with rioxarray / stackstac — no credentials
Also mirrored on AWS Earth Search — the same data, cloud-optimized on public S3, anonymous (no login at all).