Global surface temperature and radiance imagery (Copernicus)
What it measures. Brightness temperatures and radiances across the globe, showing how warm surfaces are and how much energy they emit and reflect, at about 500-meter detail for reflective bands and 1-km for thermal bands.
How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus from the Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer, delivered as Level-1 near-real-time radiances and brightness temperatures.
How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor land and sea surface temperatures, support climate studies, and detect heat anomalies.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2016-04-19 → 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 Copernicus Sentinel-3 SLSTR RBT products provide global brightness temperatures and radiances with a spatial resolution of 500 meters for reflectance bands and 1 kilometer for thermal infrared bands, useful for environmental monitoring and climate studies.
Get the data
# 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-sl-1-rbt-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 / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC