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Full catalog/sentinel-3-sr-1-sra-a-stc
sentinel-3-sr-1-sra-a-stc·dataset

Raw radar altimeter echoes, short-delay version (Copernicus)

Sentinel-3 SRAL Radar Altimetry L-1A (STC)
ocean ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Position-tagged radar echo bursts from the altimeter with all calibrations applied, before any surface-height calculation.

How it's made. Collected by the SRAL radar altimeter aboard ESA Copernicus' Sentinel-3 satellites as a Level-1A product, in a "slow-time-critical" version balancing speed and quality.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level technical input for further processing rather than a ready-to-use dataset, used to compute surface elevations over water and ice.

What's measured

SentinelCopernicusESASatelliteRadarAltimetryEUEC

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-07-30 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

This Collection provides Sentinel-3 SRAL Level-1A products, which contains geo-located bursts of echoes with all calibrations applied.

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-sr-1-sra-a-stc"],   # 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.