Top-of-atmosphere reflectance, short-delay input (Copernicus)
What it measures. The brightness of sunlight reflected at the top of the atmosphere, uncorrected for air and clouds, at roughly one-kilometer pixels. It is a raw-style product, here in a version processed after a short delay for improved quality.
How it's made. Generated from the SYNERGY instruments aboard ESA Copernicus's Sentinel-3 satellites at Level-2, in continuity with the older SPOT VEGETATION instrument.
How & where you'd use it. Serves researchers who need a refined top-of-atmosphere starting point to compute their own surface and vegetation measurements.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2018-10-08 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
- Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
- Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description
This Collection provides the Sentinel-3 Synergy Level-2 Top of Atmosphere Reflectance product, which is a SPOT VEGETATION Continuity Product containing measurement data similar to that obtained by the VEGETATION instrument onboad the SPOT-3 and SPOT-4 satellites.
Get the data
# 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-syn-2-vgp-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 / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC