S6A_RO_2__NRT_NC__: Sentinel-6A Near-Real-Time Atmospheric Profiles

Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich, launched on November 21, 2020, provides Level 2 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio-Occultation (RO) Near-Real-Time retrievals. Each data granule represents one occultation event, containing high-resolution vertical profiles of refractivity, temperature, and humidity for the troposphere and stratosphere. This dataset is a product of a collaborative mission between NASA's JPL, EUMETSAT, ESA, NOAA, and CNES, designed to support numerical weather prediction and climate assessment.

Use Cases

• Assimilating temperature and humidity profiles into numerical weather prediction models to improve forecast accuracy.
• Assessing long-term temperature and humidity changes in the troposphere and stratosphere for climate monitoring.
• Validating atmospheric models using GNSS radio occultation-derived refractivity data.
• Locating specific atmospheric soundings using the nominal geodetic reference latitude and longitude for each occultation event.

Strengths

• Data is generated in near-real-time (NRT), supporting time-sensitive applications like weather forecasting.
• Provides high-resolution vertical profiles from a major international satellite mission (Sentinel-6A).
• Dataset is hosted on multiple authoritative platforms (NASA Earthdata, Data.gov), indicating reliability and importance.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided in any source.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms.
• One platform lists a last update date of 2026-04-09, which is a future date, indicating a potential metadata error.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), generated from the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich satellite.

Collection Method

GNSS Radio-Occultation (RO) sounding technique.

Time Range

Coverage begins after the satellite launch on November 21, 2020; specific end date not provided.

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:05:13.283891

Geography

Global, as each granule is associated with a nominal geodetic reference location (latitude/longitude) for an occultation event.