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

Calibrated sea-ice freeboard, polar oceans (Copernicus)

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

What it measures. Estimates of radar freeboard, the height ice rises above the water, across Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.

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

How & where you'd use it. Feeds long-term records of sea-ice thickness and extent used in climate and polar research.

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 Sea Ice products, which contains estimations of the radar freeboard over the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.

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-si-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.