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Full catalog/sentinel-3-sr-2-lan-li-nrt
sentinel-3-sr-2-lan-li-nrt·dataset

Near-real-time ice sheet height, Greenland and Antarctica (Copernicus)

Sentinel-3 SRAL Land Radar Altimetry - Land Ice (NRT)
ocean ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. The surface height of the great ice sheets, giving elevation estimates across Greenland and Antarctica.

How it's made. Calculated from the SRAL radar altimeter on ESA Copernicus' Sentinel-3 satellites as a Level-2 land-ice product, delivered in near-real time.

How & where you'd use it. Helps watch how polar ice sheets rise and fall, an early signal of ice loss and its contribution to sea-level change.

What's measured

SentinelCopernicusESASatelliteRadarAltimetryLandIceEUEC

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-09-20 → 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-2 Land Altimetry Land Ice products, which contains surface topography estimations of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

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-2-lan-li-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.