S6A_RO_1B_BND_____: Sentinel-6A GNSS Radio Occultation Bending Angle Profiles

Sentinel-6A EUMETSAT GNSS-RO Non-Time-Critical Level 1B data provides bending angle retrievals from Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation events. Each data granule represents a single occultation, with a nominal geodetic reference location marking the point where the satellite line-of-sight touches the Earth's reference ellipsoid. The dataset supports the generation of high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature and humidity for assessing atmospheric changes and improving weather forecasts.

Use Cases

• Generating vertical temperature and humidity profiles based on GNSS radio occultation bending angle data.
• Assessing long-term temperature and humidity changes in the troposphere and stratosphere for climate studies.
• Assimilating atmospheric state information into numerical weather prediction models to improve forecast accuracy.
• Validating other atmospheric remote sensing instruments using the precise geolocation of each occultation event.

Strengths

• Data originates from a major international satellite mission (Sentinel-6A) involving NASA JPL, EUMETSAT, ESA, NOAA, and CNES.
• Provides a fundamental geophysical variable (bending angle) for deriving high-resolution atmospheric profiles.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and operational use.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-04-09 is a future date, indicating a potential metadata error or placeholder value.
• License is listed only as 'other-license-specified', requiring users to seek out specific terms.

Provenance

Source

European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) from the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich satellite.

Collection Method

Generated from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio-Occultation (RO) Non-Time-Critical (NTC) retrievals.

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:05:30.930400

Geography

Global, with each data point associated with a specific occultation event location.