Sentinel-3A OLCI: Earth-Observation Full Resolution Data

Sentinel-3A's Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) provides Level-1B Earth-observation data at a native Full Resolution of approximately 300 meters. The instrument is the successor to ENVISAT's MERIS, featuring five cameras in a fan-shaped configuration and on-board calibration hardware using sun diffusers. Data is provided in Full Resolution (FR) and a Reduced Resolution (RR) mode of approximately 1.2 km.

Use Cases

• Monitoring ocean color and phytoplankton based on the instrument's spectral channels.
• Analyzing land surface reflectance for vegetation and land cover studies.
• Calibrating atmospheric radiation models using on-board sun diffuser data.
• Comparing environmental changes with historical ENVISAT MERIS data as OLCI is its successor.

Strengths

• Provides data at two spatial resolutions: Full Resolution (~300m) and Reduced Resolution (~1.2km).
• Features on-board calibration with three dedicated sun diffusers for radiometric and spectral accuracy.
• The instrument's field of view is shifted 12.6 degrees to minimize sun glint impact on observations.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific columns are not provided by any source.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without details.
• The 'last updated' metadata from Data.gov shows a future date (2026), indicating potential platform data freshness issues.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by the Sentinel-3A satellite's Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), a push-broom imaging spectrometer.

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:27:57.589599

Geography

Global coverage from satellite orbit.