Copernicus Sentinel-3 Land Thematic Products: Full Mission Reprocessing & Availability Status

Copernicus Sentinel-3 Land Thematic Products: Full Mission Reprocessing & Availability Status

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 Altimetry Land Thematic Products (TP) with Baseline Collection 005 (BC005) full mission reprocessing is completed. Improved and tailored level-2 data for both Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B Altimeters have been generated and are now available to users.

The reprocessing of the S3 Land Altimetry mission data set covers from the Beginning Of the Mission (BOM) up to 2 April 2023. Between this date and around 20 September 2023 pilot thematic products are available. After September 2023 Sentinel-3 Altimetry Land Thematic Products BC005 are operationally produced. The Figure 1 below shows the dataset coverage.

Figure 1: S3 Land Altimetry Thematic Products dataset coverage

The Full Mission Reprocessing activities have been performed by Telespazio (IT) in coordination with the Sentinel-3 Land Altimetry Mission Performance Cluster (MPC) led by CLS (FR) and it has been completed in October 2023.

This article reports information on the reprocessing status and data availability of the S3 Land Altimetry level-2 Thematic Products

Table 1: Reprocessed data availability status, last update 17th October 2023.

Operation mode

Reprocessed data interval (start-stop)

Validation Status

Data Release

Sentinel-3A

LRM

01/03/2016 – 12/04/2016 (up to ~ 12h)

Validated

Yes

SAR

12/04/2016 – 02/04/2023

Validated

Yes

Sentinel-3B

LRM

08/05/2018 - 11/07/2018 (up to ~ 15h)

Validated

Yes

SAR

11/07/2018 – 02/04/2023

Validated

Yes

 

Percentage of validated products with respect to the full mission reprocessed dataset.


 

Please note the level-2 products generated with initial Sentinel-3 Low Resolution Mode (LRM) measurements must not be considered as "Thematic Products", as the measurement footprint and the associated data quality are not equivalent.

Be aware in LRM the product name remains the same as a Thematic one: “S3A_SR_2_LAN_LI_” or “S3A_SR_2_LAN_SI_” or “S3A_SR_2_LAN_HY_”.

Sentinel-3 operated in Low Resolution Mode (LRM) only at the early stage of the missions:  

  • Sentinel-3A: from beginning of mission until 12/04/2016, ~12h  
  • Sentinel-3B: from beginning of mission until 11/07/2018, ~15h

Data Access

Copernicus Sentinel-3 Land Thematic Products: Data Access

Data access through dedicated FTP is no longer available. Sentinel 3 data and full mission reprocessed data are available at Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.

Sentinel-3 LAND Thematic Products

Sentinel-3 LAND Thematic Products

ESA and the Sentinel-3 Land Altimetry Mission Performance Cluster (MPC) have recently developed dedicated delay-Doppler and level-2 processing chains for the generation of new Sentinel-3 STM Land level-2 products over (1) Inland Waters, (2) Sea Ice, and (3) Land Ice areas. The objectives of these so-called Thematic Instrument Processing Facilities (T-IPF) are to improve the performances of the current Sentinel-3 STM Land level-2 products and address the specific needs of the user communities for these three continental surfaces.

Compared to the Sentinel-3 STM Land level-2 products, the content, and the format of the new T-IPFs L2 products have significantly evolved.

The delay-Doppler processing is now integrated into the level-2, while in previous baseline it was in the level-1. The main processing evolutions are:

  • For Inland waters and Sea Ice: Hamming window and waveform zero-padding have been implemented in the delay-Doppler processing in SAR mode. Therefore, the number of waveform samples is now doubled compared to previous PB (currently 256 samples compared to 128 previously used).
  • For Land Ice: The “extended-window” has been implemented in the delay-Doppler processing, to optimize the generation of SAR mode waveforms over rough and/or steeply sloping surfaces. The SAR mode waveforms over land ice are now centered around sample 44. In addition, the slope model used to relocate measurements at Point Of Closest Approach was also updated.
  • The Sea Ice and Land Ice Thematic products have “equator-to-equator” coverage, while Inland-Water Thematic products remain “pole-to-pole” (for the start and end of the track in NetCDF files)

More information on the new thematic products is available at the following resources:

 

Menu Display

Go to