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

Calibrated ice sheet height, Greenland and Antarctica (Copernicus)

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

What it measures. Surface elevation estimates of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, showing how their height varies.

How it's made. Produced from the SRAL radar altimeter aboard ESA Copernicus' Sentinel-3 satellites as a Level-2 land-ice product, in a fully quality-checked version.

How & where you'd use it. Used in climate research to track long-term thinning or thickening of polar ice and its role in rising seas.

What's measured

SentinelCopernicusESASatelliteRadarAltimetryLandIceEUEC

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2016-03-01 → 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-ntc"],   # 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.