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sentinel-3-sr-2-wat-ntc·dataset

Calibrated ocean surface height (Copernicus)

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

What it measures. Open-ocean radar altimetry readings that capture the height of the sea surface.

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

How & where you'd use it. Underpins precise sea-level records and ocean-circulation studies where accuracy is essential.

What's measured

1640mAltimetryCopernicusECESAEUOceanP1MRadarSRALSR_2_WAT____SatelliteSentinelSentinel-3

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2017-01-28 → 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 Ocean Altimetry products, which contain data on ocean radar altimetry measurements.

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-wat-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.