Near-real-time global land surface temperature (Copernicus)
What it measures. The actual temperature of the ground's surface skin worldwide, on a roughly 1 km grid. "Skin" means the very top layer of bare soil or the top of a plant canopy as seen from above, not the air temperature.
How it's made. Derived from the SLSTR thermal imager aboard ESA Copernicus' Sentinel-3 satellites as a Level-2 product, using two infrared channels and delivered quickly in near-real time.
How & where you'd use it. Helps track heatwaves, urban heat islands, drought stress on crops, and wildfire conditions when timeliness matters most.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2016-04-19 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
- Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
- Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description
This Collection provides Sentinel-3 SLSTR Level-2 Land Surface Temperature products containing data on land surface temperature measurements on a 1km grid. Radiance is measured in two channels to determine the temperature of the Earth's surface skin in the instrument field of view, where the term "skin" refers to the top surface of bare soil or the effective emitting temperature of vegetation canopies as viewed from above.
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-2-lst-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