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Full catalog/sentinel-6-p4-1b-nrt
sentinel-6-p4-1b-nrt·dataset

Ocean surface radar readings, fast delivery (Copernicus)

Sentinel-6 P4 Level 1B Near Real-Time (NRT)
land ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Captures the raw, calibrated radar signals used to figure out sea surface height, wind speed at the surface, and wave height across the world's oceans.

How it's made. From the Sentinel-6 mission's radar altimeter at processing Level-1B, delivered in 10-minute chunks within three hours.

How & where you'd use it. An intermediate engineering product that becomes sea-level and wave information after further processing; mainly for technical and operational users.

What's measured

CopernicusSentinelEUESAEUMETSATSatelliteGlobalEarth

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2021-10-31 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The Sentinel-6 P4 Level 1B Near Real-Time (NRT) product provides low-latency, operational-quality ocean surface data, including sea surface height, wind speed, and wave height. The data are segmented into 10-minute granules per ground station pass and delivered within three hours of acquisition. The product is provided in NetCDF and BUFR formats.

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-6-p4-1b-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.