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Full catalog/sentinel-3-syn-2-vgp-ntc
sentinel-3-syn-2-vgp-ntc·dataset

Raw daily surface-colour input before cleanup, from ESA's Sentinel-3 satellites (~1 km detail)

Sentinel-3 SYNERGY Top of Atmosphere Reflectance (NTC)
atmosphere ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Records how much sunlight is reflected back to space at the top of the atmosphere, before haze, clouds, and air effects are removed. Pixels are about a kilometer wide. This is an upstream input rather than a finished surface map.

How it's made. Produced by the SYNERGY instruments on ESA Copernicus's Sentinel-3 satellites at Level-2, extending the measurement series begun by the SPOT VEGETATION sensors.

How & where you'd use it. Mainly a building block for scientists who apply their own atmospheric corrections to derive surface reflectance, vegetation, or other land products.

What's measured

1000mCopernicusECESAEUMixedP1MReflectanceSY_2_VGP____SatelliteSentinelSentinel-3

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

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-syn-2-vgp-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.