Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/sentinel-3-olci-1-err-nrt
sentinel-3-olci-1-err-nrt·dataset

Coarse global color radiances, fast delivery (Copernicus)

Sentinel-3 OLCI Earth Observation Reduced Resolution (NRT)
land ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Light measurements across 21 color bands from visible to near-infrared at a coarser roughly 1.2-km resolution, covering the world about every two days.

How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus from the Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Color Instrument, delivered quickly as Level-1 near-real-time reduced-resolution radiances.

How & where you'd use it. A quick, lighter-weight input for large-scale ocean and land color monitoring where fine detail is not needed.

What's measured

1200mCopernicusECESAEUEarthGlobalOLCIOL_1_ERR____PT3HSatelliteSentinelSentinel-3

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2020-04-16 → 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 Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) Earth Observation Reduced Resolution dataset contains top of atmosphere radiances at 21 spectral bands with center wavelengths ranging between 0.4µm and 1.02µm at spatial resolution of 300m with worldwide coverage every ~2 days.

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-3-olci-1-err-nrt"],   # 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.